How many hours should I shadow?

[Renaissance Man]

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typical response, say the other person is a troll for disagreeing with you...have you noticed that everyone on here disagrees with you? flipguy even agrees with me! I have no interest in leading others astray, I would never harm another to improve my chances, all I said was that you are dead wrong for saying that an applicant needs 600 clinical hours, and you are. I countered and said 100 was reasonable for a typical applicant. Nowhere did I say others should stop shadowing at a certain number of hours, or discourage others from doing what they think is competitive. I said your requirement was wrong, and it is.

http://www.studentdoc.com/medical-school-requirements.html
again proof from this very site, read it....I guess SDN is leading students astray as well?

http://www.aamc.org/students/applying/about/start.htm
from the aamc, where is the recommendation for 600 hours? Is your advice better than theirs?

I am allowed to argue my point, my side was echoed by extravagant, zachjm2, coleontheroll, and others.

 

[Renaissance Man]

thanks surftheihop, I was just saying his numbers were overboard and then I got attacked and called a troll...(when the majority would side on my side). Seems apunic needs to personally dis others as well.

can't wait to chill out with you at Folly 🙂

 

[flip26]

x2. In many university hospitals people who are not personnel are not allowed in procedure rooms so that imposes a big limit on hours. Many docs (both in private practice and in teaching hospitals) also don't like non-personnel around patients for many reasons. I am surprised some people can find so many docs open to letting them do so many hours. Other than some general lifestyle things, I doubt you can learn anything health-related anyway as a premed. That's another reason why I said shadowing is overrated.

I did a minimal amount of shadowing because I found it hard to line this activity up, and I felt like I was intruding. This seems to vary from one city to another, and from one hospital to another. Shadowing where I live is not a widely accepted practice, and I got tired of begging for hours, so I quit doing it after a while.

I found the best place to shadow is in the ED - those are semi public spaces in the hospital anyway, and the EM docs I shadowed were very cool about having premeds around, and it is possible to log a bunch of hours at once, like an 8 to 12 hour shift, without really getting in anybody's way.

As I also said higher up in the thread, shadowing is hugely overrated...try for at least 40 hours, don't worry about much more than that, so long as you have a much higher number of clinical hours elsewhere.

To anyone still following the thread: get some shadowing in. Doesn't have to be a ton of hours. Do plenty of volunteering in a variety of clinical settings - hospital, free clinic, nursing home, etc. If you volunteer for a year and a half or so, doing 2 to 3 hours a week, you should be OK hours-wise.

It isn't the number of hours as much as the quality of the experience that matters. But it would be pretty hard to make your case to an adcom if you have only around 50 hours total vol and shadowing...

 

[Renaissance Man]

thank you flip, something we agree on, not sure what we argued about but I am not trying to screw others up at all, and that accusal does not sit well with me, i was merely arguing and felt like it became more of a personal backlash

 

[apumic]

There is an ongoing argument here about the number of hours to shadow. Someone in this thread strongly implied that 400 hours was a piece of cake (of which you and I both disagreed). But further, I think even the upper range quoted in this thread is overkill. How is shadowing is beneficial to anyone else? It's watching a doctor for my own benefit. How does it benefit the staff? I'm mostly getting in their way. Clinical is different, of course.

I would argue more than 100 hrs of shadowing is definitely excessive. (I have seen 1 or 2 schools say 90 hrs is ideal but most seem to go w/ lower, so I would say 40-100 is probably a good range.) I was speaking of clinical experience as being helpful to pts and staff NOT shadowing, which I feel I was pretty clear on in my post. Shadowing is of little use beyond a few hrs in each specialty in which you have interest.

typical response, say the other person is a troll for disagreeing with you...have you noticed that everyone on here disagrees with you? flipguy even agrees with me! I have no interest in leading others astray, I would never harm another to improve my chances, all I said was that you are dead wrong for saying that an applicant needs 600 clinical hours, and you are. I countered and said 100 was reasonable for a typical applicant. Nowhere did I say others should stop shadowing at a certain number of hours, or discourage others from doing what they think is competitive. I said your requirement was wrong, and it is.

http://www.studentdoc.com/medical-school-requirements.html
again proof from this very site, read it....I guess SDN is leading students astray as well?

http://www.aamc.org/students/applying/about/start.htm
from the aamc, where is the recommendation for 600 hours? Is your advice better than theirs?

I am allowed to argue my point, my side was echoed by extravagant, zachjm2, coleontheroll, and others.

I never said 600 hrs. You apparently refuse to read what I have written and have been misquoting me for many posts. Go back and read my posts. Up to 500 hrs is required at some schools (with many/most desiring at least 200). That is my argument. Some schools require as much as 200-500 hrs. That 500-hr figure is directly from the mouth of one of the executive directors of the AAMC and the dean and assoc. dean of a major medical school that many SDN members apply to each year. They want 500 hrs, so I am suggesting that to include all schools, one would be well-advised to shoot for that number being as it is quite attainable unless you wait until a month before applying to get some clinical experience.

You do realize studentdoc ≠ SDN, right?

Anyway, those sites listed nothing in the way of recommended numbers of hours. They support no one. The numbers recommended by many sites are generally in the 200-500 hr range, depending on the source. I gave my suggestion based upon the research I have done as well as my own experience with how long it generally takes people to learn a new job to a point where they would most likely be able to explain it to others as well as earn a good LOR.

 

[surftheiop]

thanks surftheihop, I was just saying his numbers were overboard and then I got attacked and called a troll...(when the majority would side on my side). Seems apunic needs to personally dis others as well.

can't wait to chill out with you at Folly 🙂

from my name you should be able to tell my beach of choice 😀

 

[Renaissance Man]

or isle of palms 👍

any-who, ok 500 rather than 600, you win....with all this research you have done, will post a few sites that say this? maybe the web page of this mystery school you say requires 500?

the fact that my sites did not say anything about a requirement most certainly proves you wrong. thats because most schools (i have not been to every website of every school) do not have a minimum requirement of clinical hours at all...you are wrong, and everyone on here pretty much agrees

 

[Flippinski]

I can promise you some do. And that comes directly from the dean and assoc. dean of admissions of one such school. Since there is more than 1 such school and <200 (incl osteopathic) to apply to, "99%" is simply false. Additionally, it is crucial to be able to discuss your experience. Working the equivalent of <1 week (FTE) is a pretty lame (hardly even laughable) joke of an experience. Many applicants take a gap year and this is one of the reasons. Clinical experience is a crucial element to your application. It becomes even more critically important if you don't have absolutely perfect stats everywhere else.

Btw, you don't need EMT, CNA, MA, EKG, etc., to work in a clinical setting. You can work jobs like mental health tech or residential counselor (hands out meds, CPR/FA certified at many places) with literally 0 formal training (they train you on the job). Those kinds of positions are going to give you a lot more talk about in an interview than will a measly 100 hrs volunteering at some hospital changing urine-stained bed sheets or pointing pts to the ED at some desk in the hospital lobby day in and day out.

If you can't swing 10 hrs/wk to volunteer or work somewhere along w/ your school schedule, tell me: how do you expect to make it through medical school? I wish I were kidding, but 10 hrs/wk is nothing. Your UG schedule doesn't even compare to med school from talking w/ current and past med students (even my dad would say that and he went to med school several decades ago when they were barely starting to understand half the stuff they teach you now). My undergraduate schedule sr yr (pulling 21 units + practicing music a good 10-20 hrs/wk + 35 hr/wk job + 10 hr/wk internship + training/supervising student leaders) didn't even compare to med school and I still managed to hang out with friends quite a bit and go on day trips with friends on occasion. Sorry, I don't buy the "1/4-time volunteering is just too much" excuse. It's not. And if you split it over 2 years (starting sophomore year) it'd be a mere 5 hrs/wk and you'd still be ready to apply end of jr yr.

Getting in w/ <100 hrs of clinical experience is kind of like getting in w/ <3.0 GPA. Is it possible? Sure! Is it likely? Not really. The whole package is what counts so we're going to see outliers on both sides but low clinical experience is certainly not going to make gaining admission to medical school any easier.

In response 10 hrs a week is actually A LOT. I'm someone, who 100% had to finance their education and support themselves while completing an undergraduate degree. So if you take 15 credits (which is around 20 hrs in class and lab a week, then add about another 20 hrs outside of class for homework) that right there is the equivalent of a full time job. Class and study from 8-4, then go and work your job at night 30 hrs per week (5-930), 10 hrs of federal work study, and then another part time job on saturdays. So 10 hrs a week on top of that schedule in volunteering....I think if you can do that, that's amazing. If you are just taking credits and not working, well then yeah 10 hrs isn't much, but if you hold a job and have to work for your education and self support yourself, that shows a lot of hard work, determination, and commitment. Not everyone can have mom and dad support them...

 

[DrOMG]

holy resurrection

 

[deleted662474]

holy resurrection

 

[binderpaper]

General SDN wisdom is to shadow 40-100 hours and have 200-500 hours of clinical experience total

So does "clinical experience" = shadowing + clinical volunteering??

 

[Lawpy]

So does "clinical experience" = shadowing + clinical volunteering??

holy resurrection

Clinical experience is anything that involves you interacting with patients, usually in a clinical setting (hospital, clinic, hospice etc.). This can be active like volunteering or work... or passive like shadowing physicians