how long to shadow?

[nehuHI]

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Hello,
Right now I'm working full-time and have been volunteering at a hospital. I've had other hospital volunteering experiences in the past but have never shadowed a doctor. How long do most applicants shadow a doctor for? How many different doctors would the average applicant have shadowed?

 

[AnotherDork]

nehuHI, I never shadowed a doctor before medical school. I was similar to you in that I had a bunch of clinical volunteer experiences, but I don't think checking the box "Shadow a doctor" is necessary. I do think it would be a valuable experience for you, if you have a convenient route to finding one who will let you follow him/her around, but you don't need to do it just to put it on your application.

That's what your entire third year of medical school is for 😉

 

[alyssadk]

As an aside, I did shadow some nurses at my hospital and talk to docs, I told the hospital I wanted to shadow docs and they told me nurses only because of privacy for some reason? On the other hand, the hospital has a policy that they won't write letters for you or (if I remember correctly) that you volunteered there. So I'm not sure how that would affect shadowing or volunteer hours, as it is the only hospital near me and I don't think you could even work up to patient experience in volunteering.

 

[pirateinaskirt]

Listen to the med student.
And in my humble non-med-student opinion, I agree with him that you can have meaningful clinical experience that isn't shadowing per se, and I think what you get out of the shadowing matters a lot more than the set number of hours. Quality over quantity, within reason of course.

Edit: the other post wasn't there when I said listen to the med student. I don't mean to discount alyssadk's response.

 

[kansaskid]

I shadowed a pediatrician for about 50 hours total over the course of a summer and winter break. I also had other hospital volunteering, but I learned most about what the profession is like through shadowing...so I definitely recommend it. It's interesting and fun to get the behind the scenes look that you probably won't have seen before!

 

[imyahuckleberry]

I think at least UWash specifies a minimum of 40 hours of shadowing.

 

[Mobius1985]

From what I've seen on SDN, there are a few med schools that don't care if you shadow, but most feel it's a valuable experience. You will want your application to satisfy the expectations of a range of schools. The average involvement in this activity seems to be 8-40 hours for each of 2-3 types of docs. The important thing is what you take away from the experience, not how long you do it.

 

[flip26]

If you have a decent number of hours exposure to clinical medicine via volunteering, shadowing is a "nice to have" but not an absolutely "must have" experience, with some exceptions - some med schools definitely expect it.

Therefore, it behooves you to get at least some shadowing under your belt. In terms of hours, I think that shadowing a handful of different docs for around 40 to 50 hours total is sufficient, but only if you have a clinical exposure that measures in the hundreds of hours, preferably over a longer rather than shorter time frame.

Clinical volunteering at the rate of 3 hours a week for a year is preferred to 150 hours crammed into a few months right before you submit the AMCAS. These aren't "my" rules, but I base this on everything I have read about the subject.

There will be applicants with 1,000 hours of shadowing and 2,000 hours of clinical volunteering, and I think that is nutty overkill.