Little Shadowing

Started by evansh
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evansh

Full Member
7+ Year Member
How bad is only having around 10-15 hours of shadowing if I have a good amount (4-5k) hours of combined paid clinical work and clinical volunteering?
 
I'm in the same boat, lots of in hospital clinical work, little shadowing (it's effectively unlawful in hospitals in my province), hopefully it won't hurt us too much.
 
heebeejeebies said:
I'm in the same boat, lots of in hospital clinical work, little shadowing (it's effectively unlawful in hospitals in my province), hopefully it won't hurt us too much.
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Yup. I wish I found SDN sometime before submitting AMCAS. I had always been told at my school that only clinical exposure as a whole was important, and that the breakdown of shadowing, volunteer, and paid was unimportant.
 
I have the same. I think it's okay- they tell you that shadowing is to see what the day to day life of a physician is. As long as you've covered that with multiple specialties you should be fine.
 
N=1, but last year I applied with 30 hours of shadowing and no other clinical experiences and finished with 3 acceptances. Quantity =/= quality, and it really is how you sell that experience
 
ndafife said:
N=1, but last year I applied with 30 hours of shadowing and no other clinical experiences and finished with 3 acceptances. Quantity =/= quality, and it really is how you sell that experience
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That's good to hear actually. Congrats to you! I'm curious what the SDN adcoms think about this.
 
I'm a nontrad, but I had so little shadowing that I didn't make it its own section. I just referenced it in my PS and secondaries. I got 4 acceptances (out of 11 schools that I applied to.) If you want to make it a section, you can continue to do shadowing throughout 2015 and mention this in secondaries and interviews.
 
evansh said:
That's good to hear actually. Congrats to you! I'm curious what the SDN adcoms think about this.
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I think the type of shadowing is important too, most of mine was in direct medical evaluations on clinic floors, so patient histories, standardized interview stuff, examinations etc.

I got to see the "one on one" dynamic.

Whereas a lot of my friends observed surgeries, so they have 30+ more hours than me, but it was mostly looking at a laparoscopic procedure on a screen with some surgeon commentary on the side.
 
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