No shadowing but lots of clinical?

[cakt27]

I applied last cycle to no avail which I kind of expected because I only had hospital volunteer experience and worked part time as a physical therapy aide.
This past year I have been working as a medical assistant at a clinic with NPs and PAs and will have about 1500 hours by the time I apply this round. The problem is that I still don't have any shadowing experience (and won't get any now due to COVID) and my clinical experiences haven't been directly with MDs. Am I screwed?
GPA: 3.64 MCAT: 515 (130/129/128/128)
Other extracurriculars: UNICEF club event coordinator then president, children's hospital volunteer, family housing shelter volunteer, summer research internship, physical therapy aide

I plan to emphasize that after working with NPs and PAs I know I don't want to go that route bc of how limited they are in their scope (e.g. when we have a difficult patient we have to consult with an MD) and I don't want those limitations in my own practice but is this enough?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[DrPatrickStar]

Medical assistants are not expected to work directly with doctors (from my experience working in medical offices) so I would talk about the patient care mostly as this is what is important. Have you asked the doctors at your clinic if you could shadow them? I also feel like you shouldn't talk about why you don't want to be an NP or PA as much as you should talk about why being a doctor fulfills your career goals.

 

[cakt27]

We are enforcing social distancing very strictly at our clinics right now and only have a couple MDs in the whole organization for 15ish clinics so very slim chance of them letting me shadow but I will try to contact them and see!
Thanks for the advice to emphasize patient care, I really did have a lot of meaningful patient experiences and got to do a lot of education and counseling with them as well so hopefully app committees will be willing to look past my lack of shadowing