Average amount of shadowing hours

[mmbrink6]

Typically what is a good number of shadowing hours, and from how many physicians does it matter to show medical schools you are certain about your career choice, and to also show that you have acquired a reasonable amount of clinical experience to be competitive for medical school?

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[music2doc]

Bad question. Try again.

 

[Benedictus123]

Exactly 37. Any less and you might as well flush your money down the toilet when you submit to AMCAS.

 

[I Love Cats]

I feel like I've seen a lot of numbers in the 30-50 range. Thats where i am. In my opinion that's even excessive, but to be honest, being a premed can often be so freaking lame with experiences, and with little cool experience comes a more difficult time when trying to write passionately while showing experiences in things like your personal statement and primary application. Shadow till you accumulate good experiences and see some stuff that tugs at you and makes you cringe or drops your BP a little (just examples) so that when the time comes for you to have to write in a way that needs to convey passion associated with experiences, you can.

"I've see some things man, and some stuff. I wouldn't recommend it!" - actually I would recommend it, just a fun quote.

And you can't show anyone you're certain. You can't even yourself be certain. Your goal is to become as confident as you can, 99.9999% sure, which comes a lot through innate drive and is proven through experiences so that you can try and convince an admin you're legit.

 

[AdrianVeidt]

I did about 150 over a year period, with 50 of those coming in a 2 week span. I can honestly say I had a great understanding of a physician's daily duties after the initial 50 hours, but I wanted to look at other physician types so I put in the extra time.

Funny because before and after the shadowing I had the same main clinical interest. Waste of time, probably. But then again, I have 0 hours of actual hospital volunteering so that may make up for it.

 

[earf]

You shadow until you know whether you want to be a doctor or not. However many hours until it confirms or dissuades you from being a doctor is different for different people. After you learn either way, you should do something else with your time to make a more meaningful contribution to the community (volunteering, research, etc.)