How much shadowing do I need (if I already have sort of experience)

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mollyguacomole

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Hi!

This is my first time posting, so I'm going to apologize first off if I'm not following some sort of etiquette.

So I'm currently a Junior, and I haven't officially shadowed any doctors while in college. The summer before last though I participated in a 500 hour internship at a center that provides health care to the homeless. Most of this internship revolved around helping the medical director with a quality improvement research project where I shadowed patients throughout the day. As a part of this patient shadowing, I sat in on their nurse and doctor appointments, so probably logged around 100 hours of shadowing ~10 primary care doctors this way.

I shadowed doctors in high school as well (cardiologist, anesthesiologist, and pediatrician and probably did around 75-100 hours) but I know that that doesn't count to put on my application. I already feel like I got what I can out of shadowing and I feel like my time could be better spent doing something else. Looking around at previous threads about shadowing though have made me believe that regardless I need to do some more recent shadowing.

In light of all of this, do I really need to do more shadowing? How much?

Thank you!

-Molly

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I think you are fine. Don't put high school stuff on your application. I've shadowed less than 24 hours total and have had a good cycle so far.
 
I think you are fine. Don't put high school stuff on your application. I've shadowed less than 24 hours total and have had a good cycle so far.

I agree although I'd be very clear about the shadowing component when you write your description of the internship.
 
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I agree although I'd be very clear about the shadowing component when you write your description of the internship.
You might even split those hours out and list them separately under "Shadowing", subtracting the time from the internship experience.

I agree that the shadowing hours you can claim are more than enough. You might mention the HS hours in the Personal Statement as part of your Pathway to Medicine tale.
 
Great! Thank you all for the advice. I'm glad to hear I don't really need to worry about this :)
 
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