MD How to organically find physician mentors?

[tunaktunak]

I’m an incoming M1, and one thing I struggled with was not having any mentors. I worked with MD/PhDs in the lab in undergrad, but when I tried to develop a mentor/mentee relationship with them, it never panned out. This made getting letters of recommendations extremely difficult. As I’m looking to pursue a competitive specialty, I know this won’t fly when applying to residency.

My school offers no physician mentoring programs that would facilitate developing that relationship, so I will need to do this myself. I was planning on cold-calling some physicians in my intended specialty and asking if I can shadow them once or twice a week. Would that be a good start?

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[Tenk]

No that’s weird and can burn bridges early on. You have plenty of time. There will be interest groups as an MS1. Join one of those and they will set you up to shadow/get your foot in the door. Once your foot is in, the rest is up to you.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Organic means it happens naturally. You can’t force that. You’re an MS1. You have plenty of time, and your intended specialty will most likely change anyway.

 

[Redpancreas]

I’m an incoming M1, and one thing I struggled with was not having any mentors. I worked with MD/PhDs in the lab in undergrad, but when I tried to develop a mentor/mentee relationship with them, it never panned out. This made getting letters of recommendations extremely difficult. As I’m looking to pursue a competitive specialty, I know this won’t fly when applying to residency.

My school offers no physician mentoring programs that would facilitate developing that relationship, so I will need to do this myself. I was planning on cold-calling some physicians in my intended specialty and asking if I can shadow them once or twice a week. Would that be a good start?

Finding mentors can be challenging as you saw in undergrad. Your proactive approach here is correct if you’re interested in something competitive.

That said, be careful about writing checks you can’t cash. Right now you have no concept of what medical school life will be like for you. My advice is to first see what medical school throws at you in the first few weeks and then when you understand the commitment needed for classes, you can then start reaching out to heads of departments of fieldyou’re interested in. There’s always a herd mentality in the beginning because some people think that they need to rush to find opportunities. Resist that temptation. It’s stupid. There are enough medical student level projects to go around. What’s more important is getting something done when it’s assigned for you to do.

In the meantime I guess you can make sure your CV is updated but that only takes a few seconds. Don’t go snooping around to other students yet either. You don’t want to be labeled as a gunner right out of the gate. The first priority now for anyone in your shoes right now whether you want to do rural FM or Plastic Surgery is surviving the start of medical school and for that you should be enjoying your time off.