How the heck did you guys find doctors to shadow?! I am having no luck.

The office workers are the gate keepers. E-mail the physicians directly if they provide email addresses. You are more likely to find their e-mails online if they are at a teaching hospital. Also, try the networking approach, ask the family physician that you shadowed to talk to some of the specialists that he referrs his patients to.

As far as how I personally did it. I called my mom and told her to tell some of her employees I'd be shadowing them, and that was that.

i used connections. its very difficult to just call up a random MD and simply ask him if you can follow you around. i would suggest volunteering/working at a hospital to build your network and when you get comfortable with some of the physicians you meet, ask them if they wouldnt mind taking you around.

I just posted this in another thread, in the same vein as your question:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=8297219&postcount=8

The ER is a good place to shadow. You do need an "in." Many times shadowing opportunities will grow out of volunteering gigs. So try to get a volunteer gig in the ER, and over time, ask an attending if you can come in when you aren't "working" and shadow him...worked for me.

One last thought: I can't tell you how many inquiries I made for shadowing that never came to fruition. After I accumulated a certain number of different experiences (around 5 different docs and environments for a little over 50 total hours), I quit trying. But I do have approx 500 hours of high quality volunteer clinical experience with direct patient contact, and I intentionally "over did" that stuff in case any adcom might read my app and question the relatively low hour count of shadowing...

Shadowing is one of the most useless things I have ever done. If it were not a requirement, I wouldn't have even bothered...and because of HIPAA and the simple "pain in the butt" factor, many docs will not have anything to do with shadowing...if you haven't been turned down, you haven't been trying...

As others have said, volunteering is a great place to find doctors to shadow. This is how I got involved in shadowing. I was volunteering in the ER and was looking to shadow an OB/GYN, so I watched two operations done by one of the doctors, then after the second one I just went up to him and asked him if I could shadow him the following year. He then gave me his number to his office and the rest went from there. I ended up shadowing him in his office for a year, and even got to the hospital once and scrub in on some c-sections.

Good Luck!

I emailed some doctors at the university hospital here and actually had some people reply within two hours. But, I did do a bit of research and tried finding doctors who seemed friendly - pick some doctors and Google them, or see if perhaps they have received awards for teaching medical students or staff. Or, look at doctors' web pages and see if they currently are somehow involved with teaching medical students.

And, I really disagree with flip up there... I found a really cool doctor who I shadow in the clinic, and I am enjoying it enormously. And, it isn't useless at all - you get to hear about conditions people come in with (you can get a textbook and read, which is what I do), you get a sampling of patient personalities/behavior, you learn how to communicate effectively by seeing what works/doesn't... basically, you familiarize yourself with that sort of environment. I hope to shadow for the entire year.

Getting a foot in the door is pretty difficult...personally I emailed a doctor that a friend of mine had already shadowed, and my roommate's uncle happens to be a surgeon so I drove a few hours away to shadow him on a procedure.

The volunteer--->shadow maneuver is probably the most consistently solid way to do it, other than that you just have to be persistent. It took me about 6 months from initial contact to cut through the red tape and finally get in there.

I also really enjoy it, I've learned a lot at the ER.

I just looked up friendly faces and emailed them, they usually don't have a problem...........

flip26 said:

I just posted this in another thread, in the same vein as your question:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=8297219&postcount=8

The ER is a good place to shadow. You do need an "in." Many times shadowing opportunities will grow out of volunteering gigs. So try to get a volunteer gig in the ER, and over time, ask an attending if you can come in when you aren't "working" and shadow him...worked for me.

One last thought: I can't tell you how many inquiries I made for shadowing that never came to fruition. After I accumulated a certain number of different experiences (around 5 different docs and environments for a little over 50 total hours), I quit trying. But I do have approx 500 hours of high quality volunteer clinical experience with direct patient contact, and I intentionally "over did" that stuff in case any adcom might read my app and question the relatively low hour count of shadowing...

Shadowing is one of the most useless things I have ever done. If it were not a requirement, I wouldn't have even bothered...and because of HIPAA and the simple "pain in the butt" factor, many docs will not have anything to do with shadowing...if you haven't been turned down, you haven't been trying...

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that's completely untrue...I shadow in a Rheumatology Clinic and a Surgeon in the OR, the experience is valuable. You get to be with the doctor in his/her everyday environment and it's really neat to see how they deal with various issues. It's definitely a privilege IMO.

My pre-med committee had put together a list of physicians that allowed shadowing in our town at one point, so my first shadowing gig, I just randomly called one of them. My second gig, I went for a physician my mom was seeing at the time. The problem with the second was that he was a hospitalist at a private hospital (in addition to having his own clinic), and the hospital didn't allow shadowing unless it was a requirement for school (you had to have worker's comp insurance, which I thought was kinda stupid for following around someone).

Then, my school nixed the list, and I just compiled a list of physicians and started calling them. I managed to get a handful to agree to the shadowing, including one who was serving on our new DO school's admissions committee. But, several of them did either say no, or never returned my phone calls.

Some schools have tapped alumni who are physicans to facilitate shadowing. So ask your undergrad college pre-med advisor or the college alumni office to help you identify alumni of your school who are now physicians working in your area (either the area near school or the area near your home town). It helps them to "help the next generation" and it might also help them form tighter bonds with their undergrad school (so that they might be "generous" when the alumni office comes calling). It is a win-win for student & the alumni office so check it out.

I would contact your PCP and he could probably set you up with someone. Thats what i did anyways.

flip26 said:

I just posted this in another thread, in the same vein as your question:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=8297219&postcount=8

The ER is a good place to shadow. You do need an "in." Many times shadowing opportunities will grow out of volunteering gigs. So try to get a volunteer gig in the ER, and over time, ask an attending if you can come in when you aren't "working" and shadow him...worked for me.

One last thought: I can't tell you how many inquiries I made for shadowing that never came to fruition. After I accumulated a certain number of different experiences (around 5 different docs and environments for a little over 50 total hours), I quit trying. But I do have approx 500 hours of high quality volunteer clinical experience with direct patient contact, and I intentionally "over did" that stuff in case any adcom might read my app and question the relatively low hour count of shadowing...

Shadowing is one of the most useless things I have ever done. If it were not a requirement, I wouldn't have even bothered...and because of HIPAA and the simple "pain in the butt" factor, many docs will not have anything to do with shadowing...if you haven't been turned down, you haven't been trying...

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wow i couldn't disagree more. IMO, shadowing is infinitely more important that cleaning beds, transporting patients, assisting nurses.....

I work in the ER and 90% of my time in there is spent cleaning or doing something mindless for patients: helping them get to the bathroom, getting them food/water/blankets, finding their nurse. Only 10% of the time am I actually standing in on some type of procedure.

While I'm shadowing I spend 0% of the time doing mindless tasks. Everything the doctors talk about I'm processing in my brain and making an attempt to piece everything together. Not to mention we're trying to be docs here......... no janitors/nurses.

guildsman said:

It would seem to make sense for schools to do this, especially when they have a medical school and an undergraduate school. It would seem to make sense for exactly the above reasons and would be easy especially if the undergraduate school had a dedicated premed adviser/advisers. Always found it puzzling that this was one basic function that a lot of schools that could easily implement are lacking.

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Small liberal arts colleges that don't have medical schools can do this, too.

I recall seeing an application from someone who was hooked up through his undergrad college with an alumnus practicing medicine in a rural area who took an undergrad into his home during a school break (I think it was a formal program at the school) for one week of shadowing.

buccsmf1 said:

wow i couldn't disagree more. IMO, shadowing is infinitely more important that cleaning beds, transporting patients, assisting nurses.....

I work in the ER and 90% of my time in there is spent cleaning or doing something mindless for patients: helping them get to the bathroom, getting them food/water/blankets, finding their nurse. Only 10% of the time am I actually standing in on some type of procedure.

While I'm shadowing I spend 0% of the time doing mindless tasks. Everything the doctors talk about I'm processing in my brain and making an attempt to piece everything together. Not to mention we're trying to be docs here......... no janitors/nurses.

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I really don't think you truly understand the purpose of the volunteering we are supposed to be doing. What you are calling mindless tasks is learning how to give service to others. Transporting patients, and the other tasks you describe in helping patients, is a very important job in a hospital.

Volunteering is many times more important than shadowing. You can get a feel for this based on the relative numbers of hours that med schools expect to see in this regard.

If you are unable to convey in your app the importance and meaning of your volunteer work, yet think that adcoms will be impressed by all the shadowing you have done, you really don't understand this process at all...

flip26 said:

I really don't think you truly understand the purpose of the volunteering we are supposed to be doing. What you are calling mindless tasks is learning how to give service to others.

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I have to learn how to help someone to the bathroom? I have to learn how to cook a micro-wave dinner and take it to a patient? I have to learn how to clean and re-sheet a bed?

flip26 said:

Transporting patients, and the other tasks you describe in helping patients, is a very important job in a hospital.

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Yea.... that's why I have doctors falling all over themselves to help me wheel someone to their room or clean feces off a bed

flip26 said:

Volunteering is many times more important than shadowing.

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Link please? Oh wait, it's just your opinion.

flip26 said:

If you are unable to convey in your app the importance and meaning of your volunteer work, yet think that adcoms will be impressed by all the shadowing you have done

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I never said that volunteering wasn't important, because it definitely is. It shows your dedication to the field/patient and gives you an understand of how a hospital functions. It also helps give you an appreciation for everyone that makes the lives of doctors so much easier (nurses, janitors, volunteers etc.).

But in my OPINION, once you reach a certain point, volunteering doesn't do much for YOU. After about 100 hours of working in the ER the work became monotonous, and I wasn't learning anything new. Sure, past that 100 hours I was provided a service to the medical community but it wasn't helping ME on my path to becoming a doctor. The experience was priceless, but it had reached its plateau.

But I feel like the shadowing never gets old. Even if you shadowed the exact same doc for 100 hours you'd still see new stuff every single day. And it's helped me so much more to get an idea of what work will be like 10 years from now. If I'm going to spend the rest of my life working as a doctor I want to know what THAT job is like, not what the job of a janitor is like.........

flip26 said:

you really don't understand this process at all...

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right..... everyone that doesn't share your exact opinion on the importance of shadowing vs. volunteering clearly doesn't understand the application process

flip26 said:

I have done very little of that sort of thing, except for some hospice observation I did.

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EDIT: I just found this in one of your other posts and it makes me angry I even bothered writing a response. So you've basically done zero work shadowing yet you're claiming volunteering is infinitely more important.

flip26 said:

pretty good place to shadow is in the ER which is more or less a public space where you will be much less conspicuous. I share your discomfort with the whole thing, especially going into a small room with a doc and a patient

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I NEVER felt uncomfortable in any situation with a patient. In most cases the patients loved having an extra person to talk to. People were almost always interested when I or the doc mentioned that I was going to apply to medical school. More than once I ended up talking to the patients more than the doc did. So don't spew crap around this board that you can't get patient experience when you shadow. Because your recommendation of making yourself invisible is some of the worst advice I've ever seen on this board.

I've always felt lucky that my undergraduate school matched us with doctors to shadow as sophomores, juniors and seniors in good academic standing. Once you've shadowed one doctor, its relatively simple to get in to shadow others. The pre-med advisor also set up mass hospital orientations, TB test times, etc. needed in order to legitimately volunteer and shadow at our local hospital. It's an advantage I rarely see with friends and aquaintances who went to larger undergrads.

buccsmf1 said:

Link please? Oh wait, it's just your opinion.

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There are some med schools that actually list an hours requirement for shadowing experience. It is quite minimal - I am not applying to any of them, but maybe someone else here can cite an example - but the number of hours IIRC is around 40...pretty clear indication that while med schools require and value shadowing, there are rapidly diminishing returns for excess hours of this activity.

Trust me, try applying with only 40 hours of volunteering...your denigration of the value of giving service to others is completely out of step with entering the medical profession - it is a service profession.

Ask LizzyM.

flip26 said:

There are some med schools that actually list an hours requirement for shadowing experience. It is quite minimal - I am not applying to any of them, but maybe someone else here can cite an example - but the number of hours IIRC is around 40...pretty clear indication that while med schools require and value shadowing, there are rapidly diminishing returns for excess hours of this activity.

Trust me, try applying with only 40 hours of volunteering...your denigration of the value of giving service to others is completely out of step with entering the medical profession - it is a service profession.

Ask LizzyM.

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I agree with that which is bolded. See
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=8291989&#post8291989
for my comments about being on the receiving end of transportation services and how it can help you to develop skills that are of value in medicine.

I agree with LizzyM. I called up a rural clinic's physician and he agreed to let me start shadowing the next day.