Is it enough to have only shadowed 1 physican (Internal medicine)??

[JohnsonJohnson]

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I'm applying to med school this June - and so far I have only spent 50 hours shadowing a internal medicine physician. I want to shadow more specialties - but it is hard to find and very difficult with my work schedule (I live in a small town).

So is this enough? 1 primary care physician for 50 hours...
or should I frantically go try to find more?? Thanks everyone!!

 

[sinombre]

Completely depends on what other clinical experiences you have. You can get away with no "shadowing" if you have other sufficient clinical experiences in other areas of medicine. I think it's pretty obvious that if you only have 50 hours of experience directly observing what a physician in one specialty (and in one context) does, you'll have an extremely hard time convincing adcoms that you're willing to dedicate your life to medicine.

 

[MelissaThompson]

I also have 1 shadowing experience - but bunch of hospital volunteering and at nursing home.

Netted me 4 II, but no acceptances yet.

 

[MedPR]

I'm applying to med school this June - and so far I have only spent 50 hours shadowing a internal medicine physician. I want to shadow more specialties - but it is hard to find and very difficult with my work schedule (I live in a small town).

So is this enough? 1 primary care physician for 50 hours...
or should I frantically go try to find more?? Thanks everyone!!

Why don't you just make one WAMC thread and ask all your WAMC questions in it?

 

[KinesiologyNerd]

I'm an ER scribble and I've been taken to task why I've only shadowed specialists and worked in an ED. Take it with a grain of salt though, that was at a primary care crazed osteopathic school. Should've listened to one of my attendings and told them I want to be a family doc who still delivers baby in a small coal town.