Cramming your shadowing

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I’m planning on taking the MCAT next year and hopefully applying next cycle but my shadowing hours are very low (~10 hours). Have I made a huge mistake? How/why is it important for medical schools?


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[HomeSkool]

You need to get those hours up, but it shouldn't be too hard: a few hours a week and you'll be where you should be before you know it. If you're taking the MCAT in 2019, the soonest you'd be applying is the 2019-20 cycle; in that case, you've got more than enough time to get the shadowing you need.

A physician's day is more than just diagnosis and treatment: it involves personnel management, leadership, and a whole bunch of administrative stuff. It's important that applicants know whether this is really something they'll want to do for decades before starting a protracted, rigorous, and costly training program. That's why schools want shadowing experience, and it's why shadowing is different than clinical volunteering.

 

[lillian36]

I’m planning on taking the MCAT next year and hopefully applying next cycle but my shadowing hours are very low (~10 hours). Have I made a huge mistake? How/why is it important for medical schools?

Your question made me think because I am yet to start pre-med.

I guess Shadowing for long period (6 months) is good because
- it shows you understand what Medical profession entails, and whether you believe it is a true fit for you
- Physician you are shadowing can assess your strengths and can write letter of recommendation accordingly

Please visit Medical School HQ website for article "Preparing for a Career in Medicine: Clinical Experience" (unable to post link right now)

 

[MonkeyArrow]

You need to get those hours up, but it shouldn't be too hard: a few hours a week and you'll be where you should be before you know it. If you're taking the MCAT in 2019, the soonest you'd be applying is the 2019-20 cycle; in that case, you've got more than enough time to get the shadowing you need.

A physician's day is more than just diagnosis and treatment: it involves personnel management, leadership, and a whole bunch of administrative stuff. It's important that applicants know whether this is really something they'll want to do for decades before starting a protracted, rigorous, and costly training program. That's why schools want shadowing experience, and it's why shadowing is different than clinical volunteering.

So if physician shadowing is supposed to teach someone about all the aspects of a physician’s life, why is shadowing for a few hours a week (ie.: a few hours a day ie.: not the full work day acceptable)?

Presumably, the shadower will only see the physician treating patients. But by only being there for 4 hours, they won’t see the aspects of the day that they’re meant to see: getting to the hospital at 6-7 AM for anesthesia/surgery, staying late past 5 to finish charts/add-ons/take care of emergencies and complex patients.

 

[HomeSkool]

So if physician shadowing is supposed to teach someone about all the aspects of a physician’s life, why is shadowing for a few hours a week (ie.: a few hours a day ie.: not the full work day acceptable)?

Because adcoms are realistic about what premeds' schedules look like, as well as the fact that very few attendings would allow a shadower to follow them all day.

 

[a_borgia]

Because adcoms are realistic about what premeds' schedules look like, as well as the fact that very few attendings would allow a shadower to follow them all day.

That's not necessarily true, when I shadowed every attending I asked was happy to let me turn up at 6:30 am and join for anaesthesia/rounds/noon conference/etc through the day.

 

[RinShanKaiHo]

I did no shadowing and it was fine. But shadowing is important for you to grab an idea about medicine. You need to have clinical volunteering or other kind of exposure if you don't have shadowing

 

[HomeSkool]

I did no shadowing and it was fine. But shadowing is important for you to grab an idea about medicine. You need to have clinical volunteering or other kind of exposure if you don't have shadowing

You're an outlier here, but it would be foolish for others to build their application on the expectation that they could similarly break the mold. Clinical volunteering and shadowing are two very different activities and they are not interchangeable. Applicants should have both.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

You're an outlier here, but it would be foolish for others to build their application on the expectation that they could similarly break the mold. Clinical volunteering and shadowing are two very different activities and they are not interchangeable. Applicants should have both.

I have delivered primary care independently and have a decade of clinical experience and was told by an ADCOM to make sure I had some primary care shadowing before applying. It’s pretty important, I think.

 

[aldol16]

The point of shadowing is the expose you to medicine and to show that you know what you're getting yourself into. You might already know very well what you're getting yourself into, but having a few more days worth of shadowing will help you convince other people that you know what you're getting into. There's a lot more to medicine than just seeing patients and you should be aware of all that.

 

[Jdp00921]

That's not necessarily true, when I shadowed every attending I asked was happy to let me turn up at 6:30 am and join for anaesthesia/rounds/noon conference/etc through the day.

That's really cool! My shadowing experiences (at least with surgery) included Rounds, Anesthesia, and Surgery, but I never got to see any conferences or anything. Sometimes I stayed for lunch and then got to do the post-op check(s) though. My non-surgery shadowing was usually AM - Lunch only, however.

 

[The Unburnt]

This is just my personal experience/opinions so n=1 but thought I'd share anyways:

I personally was not a huge fan of shadowing and only shadowed a couple doctors who worked in my pediatric office back home (I went to college ~3 hours away from home and shadowing opportunities were almost impossible to find where I went to school.). Because of the limited amount of time I was home for the holidays, I shadowed all day for like 3-4 days at a time and don't think this was looked down upon since the whole point of shadowing is to get a better idea of what a physician's life/day is like. I had about 75 hours of shadowing in this manner. I did also have a clinical volunteering opportunity where I interpreted/scribed so I was able to witness a lot of difference doctors practicing during that experience, which I did mention in my AMCAS under my shadowing activity section (since this was a clinical volunteering position that I had mentioned in my activities before I did NOT include the hours I volunteered under my shadowing hours, just mentioned in the description that I was also able to shadow physicians while I was volunteering at X place). I've had a pretty successful cycle with a few acceptances to great MD programs so I really don't think the shadowing requirement is really all that particular.

TLDR: just do 50-100 shadowing hours in whatever way you want, it doesn't matter if you're there all day or half a day or a couple hours at a time as long as you do the hours and can show in your application that you've put enough time into knowing what being a doctor really is.

 

[akuko2]

I really see no point in shadowing besides gauging if you're willing to put up with everything it takes to get to be able to do what docs are doing. I had less than 40 hours and was fine, but worked in hospice beforehand.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I really see no point in shadowing besides gauging if you're willing to put up with everything it takes to get to be able to do what docs are doing. I had less than 40 hours and was fine, but worked in hospice beforehand.

Because the daily work of a PCP is not what many premeds think.

 

[Goro]

Your question made me think because I am yet to start pre-med.

I guess Shadowing for long period (6 months) is good because
- it shows you understand what Medical profession entails, and whether you believe it is a true fit for you
- Physician you are shadowing can assess your strengths and can write letter of recommendation accordingly

Shadowing for six months is overkill and a waste of you time that could be better spent doing other ECs. If it's say, 60 hrs over the six month period, that's fine.

SDNers should be aware, as the wise Homeskool points out, that the purpose of shadowing is that you need to show Adcoms that you know what a doctor's day is like. Scribing is both employment and shadowing, and patient contact experience combined. Well, it's glorified shadowing in my eyes.

 

[lillian36]

Shadowing for six months is overkill and a waste of you time that could be better spent doing other ECs. If it's say, 60 hrs over the six month period, that's fine.

SDNers should be aware, as the wise Homeskool points out, that the purpose of shadowing is that you need to show Adcoms that you know what a doctor's day is like. Scribing is both employment and shadowing, and patient contact experience combined. Well, it's glorified shadowing in my eyes.

So 60 hours is of quality shadow is pretty good amount then.

 

[mehc012]

Shadowing for six months is overkill and a waste of you time that could be better spent doing other ECs. If it's say, 60 hrs over the six month period, that's fine.

SDNers should be aware, as the wise Homeskool points out, that the purpose of shadowing is that you need to show Adcoms that you know what a doctor's day is like. Scribing is both employment and shadowing, and patient contact experience combined. Well, it's glorified shadowing in my eyes.

As we go into third year, I'm learning that the scribing experience varies widely from place to place. Some people, whether through a lack of initiative or the limitations of how their program is set up, get nothing more out of it than glorified shadowing. Others come out of it knowing how to write a full H+P, the standard approach to the most common things you'll see in the ED, and a lot of medical lingo (plus if they really like learning, a decent bit of pathophys from UptoDating the cool cases from each shift on the hospital computer). I still stand by my statement that I learned far more in 1.5yrs scribing than I have yet to learn in medical school...and by a substantial margin, too. That's not always the case, but it's never the case with shadowing.

Either way, whether they learn to transcribe or to write a full note without being told what to include, you get far, far more out of an experience where you can't tune out the boring bits or the long bits, and where you have to at least read and pay attention to each patient's chart. We sometimes had students come shadow back when I was scribing, and because they interacted with the chart less, they got far far less out of the experience than I did. Just something to keep in mind.

Note: I also love shadowing, for the record, but you learn substantially less and it gets frustrating. I usually try to hit at least 3-5 shifts each block here in med school, though. You get to do more with it once you put on that short white coat...throw a few sutures, lance some gnarly abscesses, maybe steer a camera. Those things are fun, but nowhere near as useful as what I learned scribing, and that's with good shadowing and some reasonable expectations of being allowed to participate as a student.

 

[Goro]

So 60 hours is of quality shadow is pretty good amount then.

Totally fine!