Shadowing - clinical experience?

[orangeman25]

Some secondaries ask you to talk about a meaningful clinical experience. I wanted to know, does shadowing count? It seems like it would but then again, you are really just a shadow.

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[Catalystik]

Some secondaries ask you to talk about a meaningful clinical experience. I wanted to know, does shadowing count? It seems like it would but then again, you are really just a shadow.

Clinical experience can be active, where you interact with patients, or passive, like shadowing, where you are present only as an observer. Some schools include both in what they call "clinical experience" and others look at them separately, especially now that the application gives separate "tags" for each. You are more likely to make a correct decision on what they are looking for if you choose a meaningful patient interaction experience (unless you review last year's school specific thread and find a more specific guideline posted by someone who called the school to ask).

 

[Ace-Co-A]

Some secondaries ask you to talk about a meaningful clinical experience. I wanted to know, does shadowing count? It seems like it would but then again, you are really just a shadow.

I guess it depends on the experience. If you shadowed and saw a patient that made you go home and look up a bunch of information about the condition and you really became fascinated with a particular specialty or something that really stood out, this could be written up as a 'meaningful clinical experience'. On the other hand, if you do some shadowing, and you come away from it thinking 'gee, I really like being in a hospital and a doctor's day seems interesting' -- yea, that's probably not a groundbreaking revelation for you and might not be the best angle for this type of secondary essay.

Just my take. Good luck.

 

[armybound]

If there's a particular patient encounter (even if you were just listening in) that was relevant to your interest in medicine, I'd write about it.