gaining experience

[prehealthadvisor55]

Hi all,

I'm a relatively new pre-health advisor at a mid-large university. Honestly looking through these forums has been tremendously helpful already!

My question is: when it comes/came to getting shadowing/clinical volunteer experiences, how much of it do you feel is up to you & how much would you expect an advising office to help you make connections? So many students come into my office expecting me to hand them names of doctors they can shadow, but time after time I have to explain that it's up to them to make the connections & get the experiences. Is this just a thing with the students I've encountered or am I missing something?

Thanks!

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[Pholaffle]

I've never expected the pre health advising body to hook me up with physicians to shadow but I have asked around with my peers to see which doctors are more open to shadowing and easier to connect with and I would go from there to break the ice

 

[WedgeDawg]

Hi all,

I'm a relatively new pre-health advisor at a mid-large university. Honestly looking through these forums has been tremendously helpful already!

My question is: when it comes/came to getting shadowing/clinical volunteer experiences, how much of it do you feel is up to you & how much would you expect an advising office to help you make connections? So many students come into my office expecting me to hand them names of doctors they can shadow, but time after time I have to explain that it's up to them to make the connections & get the experiences. Is this just a thing with the students I've encountered or am I missing something?

Thanks!

I think the best thing you can do is point them in the direction of local hospitals or doctors offices that other students have had success with in the past. If you don't have a list going yet, it might be worthwhile to send an email to students who went to your school who are now in med school and see where they did their shadowing (if it was around your school). If your school has an affiliated medical school, it might be a good idea to reach out to their administrative staff and see if you might be able to set up a shadowing pipeline for students from the undergrad college. The way my undergrad did it is each year they talked to the school's affiliated hospital and got names of doctors who were interested in having students shadow and how many students they could take each term. They would then send out an email signup list and have people rank their top choices. Students would then be matched to doctors as high on their interest list as possible and it would be then up to them to contact the doctor (when the doctors were surveyed, they provided contact information - either their own office phone or their secretary's). Obviously this requires a lot of infrastructure, and the premed advising office at my school was very well put together (which doesn't seem to be the norm), but it worked extremely well.

Really I think the answer to this depends mostly on your situation. Do you have an affiliated hospital at your school? Do you have contact info for previously successful premeds? Are there physicians in the area you or your office has been in contact with previously?

FWIW I think it's very cool that you're asking for advice about this.

 

[rilte4]

Hi all,

I'm a relatively new pre-health advisor at a mid-large university. Honestly looking through these forums has been tremendously helpful already!

My question is: when it comes/came to getting shadowing/clinical volunteer experiences, how much of it do you feel is up to you & how much would you expect an advising office to help you make connections? So many students come into my office expecting me to hand them names of doctors they can shadow, but time after time I have to explain that it's up to them to make the connections & get the experiences. Is this just a thing with the students I've encountered or am I missing something?

Thanks!

Did a double-take because I thought I misread this post. Pre-health advisor taking the initiative to inform his/herself? You da real MVP

 

[ac62994]

I got my shadowing hours through a class, so I was very spoiled and lucky!

Maybe call up local hospitals/clinics about their shadowing/volunteer requirements (I know the hospital system I shadowed at required a few paperwork and orientation). Hook up the students with volunteer opportunities and hook up the community with eager pre-med volunteers.

And in my opinion having these contacts yourself would put you a good position with many of your pre-meds and hopefully lead to successful outcomes!

 

[prehealthadvisor55]

Thanks all for the input! We have a couple of local hospitals, but also have a med school at my university that's heavy on outreach, so a lot of times when undergrads ask, the hospitals tell them they already have med students taking a lot of their places (and if they had to choose between a med student & an undergrad, they're going to pick med student). Since I started working here, the suggestion has been for students to get as much shadowing as they can when they go home for breaks where they may already have relationships established. I was mainly curious as to how other schools' pre-med advising helped in the process. I guess a lot of it comes down to what's available in the area!

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'm sure I'll have more questions for you along the way