Is how long you shadow a physician important? The longest I've shadowed was a month (total probably 7 days), most of the others were just 2-3 days thing where I was with them in clinic and saw a few surgeries. I felt that's all you really need to see what's going on--the same thing gets said at clinic and the same surgeries get done over and over again. It gets redundant and even the docs seem bored at the job. So far I have about 60 hours (half of them observing surgeries) from 8 different docs. I know a few of them have said I'm 'welcome' to continue to shadow them.
Is how long you shadow important?
- Thread starter dirigo
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2012
- Messages
- 2,780
- Reaction score
- 2,492
Volunteering, yes. You want a long commitment and make sure that you're currently doing the activity when you apply. Shadowing, not so much. It's okay to treat it like a check-list item. Once you are at around 50 hours, you should be fine. ADCOMs are okay with that too. You don't get much out of it past that.
