- Joined
- Apr 8, 2017
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Hello All,
I'm preparing to apply this upcoming round. One weak spot of my application is shadowing hours. At this point, I have 20 hours with one OBGYN in his clinic, 8 hours with a pediatric endocrinologist and genetic counselors (not sure if I should mention the genetic counselors since they're not MDs?). Two things worry me about that: that's not many hours + only two specialties represented.
However, I have (what I think is?) a sufficient amount of patient contact/clinical experience. Children's Hospital Volunteer (NICU = 131 hours), Hospital Doula (570 on-call hours, 120 patient contact hours, 20+ hours birth/breastfeeding/pregnancy training). NICU experience was primarily holding infants, Doula experience was assisting with both vaginal and cesarean deliveries. I also have some experience in the ER as a volunteer sexual assault advocate (roughly 30 hours).
If the point of shadowing is to be able to say we know what we're getting into, we've seen various physicians in action, etc...can volunteer clinical experience be considered to serve that purpose too?
I'm actively working right now to get more shadowing experience (waiting to hear back from a dermatologist and an abortion provider). I'd love to shadow a general practitioner but not sure that will happen in time. I'm in the midst of a my gap years and working 2 jobs (in health education and residential mental health care), so how many hours I can get in before June will be limited by the amount of PTO I can take.
Worse Case Scenario: if I can't get more shadowing in before I submit in a couple of months...is having only 20-30 (ish) hours, with only 2 specialties represented, going to significantly hurt my application? Or is the fact that I can speak about my NICU and Doula experience and my interactions with physicians during deliveries going to help make up for that?
I'm preparing to apply this upcoming round. One weak spot of my application is shadowing hours. At this point, I have 20 hours with one OBGYN in his clinic, 8 hours with a pediatric endocrinologist and genetic counselors (not sure if I should mention the genetic counselors since they're not MDs?). Two things worry me about that: that's not many hours + only two specialties represented.
However, I have (what I think is?) a sufficient amount of patient contact/clinical experience. Children's Hospital Volunteer (NICU = 131 hours), Hospital Doula (570 on-call hours, 120 patient contact hours, 20+ hours birth/breastfeeding/pregnancy training). NICU experience was primarily holding infants, Doula experience was assisting with both vaginal and cesarean deliveries. I also have some experience in the ER as a volunteer sexual assault advocate (roughly 30 hours).
If the point of shadowing is to be able to say we know what we're getting into, we've seen various physicians in action, etc...can volunteer clinical experience be considered to serve that purpose too?
I'm actively working right now to get more shadowing experience (waiting to hear back from a dermatologist and an abortion provider). I'd love to shadow a general practitioner but not sure that will happen in time. I'm in the midst of a my gap years and working 2 jobs (in health education and residential mental health care), so how many hours I can get in before June will be limited by the amount of PTO I can take.
Worse Case Scenario: if I can't get more shadowing in before I submit in a couple of months...is having only 20-30 (ish) hours, with only 2 specialties represented, going to significantly hurt my application? Or is the fact that I can speak about my NICU and Doula experience and my interactions with physicians during deliveries going to help make up for that?
