how do you find doctors to shadow?

1. Look them up at your local hospital, or better yet, at a nearby med school/teaching hospital if there is one and contact them directly.

2. Talk to your personal physician and see if he will let you shadow or knows someone who will

3. Lookup docs in your area online or in the yellow pages

just a few i could think of...

 

Just e-mail or call docs in specialities that interest you. Many may say "no" or not reply, but at least a few should have no problem helping you out. Good luck.

 

Residents are less likely to have time to have to deal with some pre-med shadowing them. You might find a few, but just look for settled docs that will have the time to indulge you. If you're not already affiliated with a hospital or medical school, finding an office doc will be your best bet and it's a little more relaxed. If you want to shadow in a hospital, you sometimes have to get cleared by them...background check, ID badge, etc.

 

What I did was just walk into a hospital, find someone in a LWC and ask them where I could find a doctor to shadow. Has it worked for me? No, not really but it makes for great conversations. I always get the "ok give me your name and number and I'll get in touch with you" line. One doctor actually INTERVIEWED me. Then he got angry because he asked me what I did for fun and I had to explain that I had just moved to the city and had no idea of where to have "fun". He sighed and said "that's the problem with you pre-meds. You don't know how to find something fun to do but always seem to find a Hospital". Then he told me to come back and see him after I've "lived a little". In my defense with all the signs directing you to the nearest Hospital it isn't that hard to find one.
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One thing that worked for me was volunteering on the floors at a hospital. I volunteered in the ER and in the CVICU, just visiting patients and assisting them with non-medical needs. Once I was there for a while, the staff started getting to know me and I got to be really good friends with a nurse practitioner in the CVICU. Through her I got to shadow the cardiac surgeon. I got to follow him on rounds and even watch a coronary bypass surgery in which I was able to stand right behind him while he explained to me everything he was doing (then he talked to me about medicine for about an hour afterward). I also spent a lot of time on rounds with the nurse practitioner, who taught me so much. I got to do hands on things with the patients, which was really nice, considering I was a volunteer.

Right now I'm working as a medical assistent for a podiatrist. The office is in a medical building and the podiatrist happens to be personal friends with a lot of the doctors in the building. He said he'd call one of the doctors for me and he's sure they would let me shadow, so I'm planning to shadow a cardiologist.

I've never tried just calling offices out of the phone book. I would think you might have better success going into the offices in person than calling on the phone.

 

1- Through your school
2- Yellow pages/ google (call at random and ask, you'll get some yes's and no's.

 

Also check to see if your school offers a shadowing class. At UF they had an Introduction to Physician Shadowing course. It was nice because I earned credit for it and got to shadow a Neurosurgeon

 

I asked my family doctor if he knows anyone who would let students shadow and he just said I could shadow him.

 

I looked up alums who are practicing physicians nearby. While shadowing at the hospital, I was introduced to physicians of other specialties who practically invited me to observe their surgeries.

Or you could talk to the volunteer coordinator at your local hospital.