Long-term Shadowing?

[mintendo]

Hey Guys. I'm applying this year and I have two questions regarding shadowing:

1) How much shadowing is a good number? I already have 2 but one was only a day (dermatologist) and the other one was 3 days (orthopedist surgeon). Do I need more? If so...

2) How do you find a doctor to shadow long term? I see many of you guys on here have shadowing experiences that last several months. I just don't see many doctors will make that kind of commitment easily. Where did you find such opportunities??

Thanks bunch and good luck to all of you that are applying!

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[87138]

Hey Guys. I'm applying this year and I have two questions regarding shadowing:

1) How much shadowing is a good number? I already have 2 but one was only a day (dermatologist) and the other one was 3 days (orthopedist surgeon). Do I need more? If so...

2) How do you find a doctor to shadow long term? I see many of you guys on here have shadowing experiences that last several months. I just don't see many doctors will make that kind of commitment easily. Where did you find such opportunities??

Thanks bunch and good luck to all of you that are applying!

For me, I actually did a semester-long internship as a Medical Assistant with no prior actual clinical experience under my belt. My school requires a semester long internship before your graduate, and at first I was turned off by this, but now I realize this was the greatest decision I have ever made. My internship was with a doctor I had seen for several sports injuries back in high school, and when I called him up to ask him if he had any type of internship available (fully expecting to be shuffling papers or something), he said that he most likely did. Two days later he called me back telling me I could have a paid position, and he would teach me as much as possible as we went along (he's a Family Practice doc).

I worked closely with him, and with the nursing staff, and my official title was Medical Assistant. I worked right alongside the other Nurses/MAs, and was basically one of them. The main difference was that he had me come in and help with excisions, and actually perform several shave biopsies and administer/remove sutures. Heck, the second day I was there, the head nurse taught me how to draw blood (phlebotomy), and that became a routine part of my job (I probably drew about 10 patients' blood minimum on an average day).

Simply put, this experience was above and beyond what I ever expected. I'm actually graduating this May and will have a year off between when that happens and when I (hopefully) start med school (taking MCATs this August), and that doctor said I could (he actually said he wants me to) come back and work with him for that entire year, and he'll show me even more and try to let me do even more. He's very big on educating people, and this is one quality I am extremely grateful for.

I feel as though I really lucked out, and I realize not everyone may be so lucky. But my first suggestion would be to contact perhaps your Primary Care doc, or someone else you've seen in the past for any medical conditions. Even if it's not in your desired specialty. Before I started that internship, I would've said I had no interest in FP/Primary Care, and that Orthopedics was where I wanted to go . . . but after that semester, I think I have changed my mind . . .

 

[thinknofu3]

I worked in two different places as an "intern" over 2 summers:

One summer, i worked in a foot and ankle surgery center, which is also affiliated with a huge podiatric practice. I love surgery, so the doctor (who was my doctor, actually) developed a project for me in which I took digital pictures of many of the surgeries he performed, and then catalogued them for later use in lectures, book chapters, etc. In addition to the surgical setting, I also did a lot of clinic shadowing with him as well. This was a great experience.

My second summer - and I found this position by finding a big practice and sending out my resume to all the docs - I did research for an orthopedic trauma surgeon. The "research" itself was all chart reviews, which got a little tedious, but they also made sure that each week I got to shadow a different physician. While they are all orthopedic docs, they have different specialties to their practice. I was incredibly lucky to come in contact with a pediatric ortho who was amazing, and let me come back to observe her both in clinic and surgery whenever I wanted.

Both of these positions were non-paid, but they gave me a huge amount of experience. In terms of interviews, this is important not so you can say "I have X hours", but so that you can gain a real understand of what it really means to practice medicine. For example, and this is an extreme case, i know - if you talk about ethics - I was in the office when one of the Docs got transferred a surgical case, and the patient was a man that had actually shot the brother of this same doctor's assistant and been acquitted (I hope that made sense!). So I had a fantastic example of how it is important to treat people regardless of personal biases. It is those types of experiences, rather than the actual substantive "medicine" you might learn, which are and should be the true goal of clinical experience.

And, lastly, don't do it because you feel you have to put it on an application - do it because you love it!