Advice regarding shadowing for a Canadian applicant

[MapleMan44]

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Hi everyone!
I’m a Canadian applicant looking to apply for USMD, and I’ve got a question about physician shadowing. In Canada, physician shadowing is not available for undergraduate students due to patient privacy restrictions, but I understand that most USMD schools do want shadowing. My first question is a) do they consider the fact that we don’t have shadowing in Canada? b) In case they don’t, I have shadowed a pathologist in California for ~25 hours. Is it true that I need 100+ hours with multiple specialties? I do have a sense of clinical environments as I have been a long term clinical RA in a hospital.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Shadowing: around 50 hours suffices, but no one minds if you did 100 hours. You should ask admissions teams who look at and accept Canadian applicants routinely.

 

[AJ25]

IMO, 25 hours of outpatient primary care shadowing is enough for a pre-med. Anything over that and they should be paying YOU to be there for your time lol. In other words, 50 hours is really overkill IMO...but I still think you need a letter saying you were there for 50 hours or else the school's will come right back at you and say you didn't do enough, not committed, etc. And you want to avoid that.

Specialty shadowing in a hospital is a totally different experience, you could shadow 100 hours in the OR and see a lot of cool stuff. 50 outpatient and 50 specialty shadowing sounds about right. It's diminishing returns after that.

 

[LizzyM]

25 hours in pathology is cool but try to get 25 more in a setting where the patients can talk back. 😉