How to find shadowing experiences on my own?

[cstar23]

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I just wrote a post in the pre-allo thread about the importance of shadowing to an application, and I thought that I'd check in here to see how people outside of the traditional premed programs found ways to gain that experience. I'm living in another city from both my undergrad and my post-bacc program. I work in a non-clinical job and have no family or friends who are MDs to ask. I've found it really difficult to think of ways to find opportunities. I volunteer in an ER, so I do have patient contact, but I work with the nurses and have no interactions with the doctors there to form a relationship where I would feel comfortable asking to shadow them. Did anyone here face the same difficulties, and how did you get around them?

 

[TypeA]

Do you go to a doc? ANY doc? I asked my Plastic Surgeon. Easy as pie. What do you say exactly? "May I shadow you?" (at least that was what I said)...she knew that I was returning to school (I either told her in that convo or an earlier one..I forget) But, she was very enthusiastic. The experience was great and I am going back for more in a couple of weeks.

IMO, people make this more difficult than it is. Don't be shy. You will never get what you want if you don't ask!

 

[RxnMan]

One way that really worked for me was to call the volunteer offices of the local teaching hospitals. Most hospitals, especially urban ones, will have a volunteer office. Most people will want to staff the store or be a candy striper, but you can volunteer in specific departments. And any hospital that teaches residents is a teaching hospital, so look for that or for hospitals with university/school of medicine affiliations. Those are gold.

Why teaching hospitals? Because the attendings are there to teach and what's one premed when you have med students, interns, residents, and fellows following you already?

I chose to volunteer in the ED - I got good exposure to a ton of stuff. However, if you want something like pathology, you'd be better off just talking to the department directly and asking if there's someone (a doc) that is good with premeds. Just talk to the secretary. They may treat you kinda strange, but you are cold-calling them, so expect it. If you don't get a hit, them call another department or hospital. Lather rinse repeat.

 

[Pemberley]

Many traditional pre-meds don't have anything to be jealous of, actually; the kids I talked to from the Big State U where I took a few pre-reqs had 1 afternoon per year set up for them, that was it.

I cold-called a local teaching hospital. I didn't even know whether the word "shadowing" was standard outside SDN/adcom circles, but I managed to explain what I wanted. The pediatric infectious disease secretary gave me the e-mail of the pediatric infectious disease dept head. He answered favorably -- enthusiastically, actually, he turned out to be one of those natural-born teachers whose students love him -- and that was that. Way easier than I'd thought it would be.