Shadowing experience from clinical exp?

[medic818]

So I've never explicitly shadowed a physician, but I have a ton of clinical experience that I believe has afforded me the equivalent (or better) experiences that someone would receive from just passively following a doc around all day, but I'm not sure if listing them as "shadowing" would be appropriate.

-I worked as an ER tech for almost a year, and interned in the same ER as a paramedic student. As such, I spent a lot of time working closely with the same few physicians and saw intimately what they went through, not just in treatment but also dealing with difficult patients, difficult doctors, high volumes and stress, and the mountain of paperwork.

-As part of my paramedic training I did 200 hours of clinical rotations spread out over ER, OR, ICU, OBGYN, and Psych. Probably about half that time was working directly with a physician. While not as intimate and long term as the ER tech exp, I think it provides a nice range of experience viewing medicine beyond just EM.

-I worked 2 years as a medical assistant in a family practice. Backroom, not reception, so actually handling patients, and remaining in the room for the entire eval and documenting (the Dr. was not computer savy, and our EMR software was pain to use) and saw in detail what the primary care side of medicine looks like.

-Less significantly, I worked on a mobile NICU unit as an EMT, and most calls involved working with neonatologists pretty closely.

It's hard to imagine the typical person shadowing has anything that comes close to this, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure what more I could learn shadowing, apart from following the doc on their lunch break to see if they prefer white or wheat bread. Would it be silly to list this stuff as shadowing on my app? Last thing I want is to misportray anything on my app.

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[Ismet]

You're fine. Don't list these things as shadowing. List them as what they are (seems like most of them are Employment?)

Shadowing isn't some box that needs to be checked. It's a way to see that you've seen what a doctor does first hand. And you have. Committee members will read these descriptions and will have no doubt in their minds that you have excellent clinical exposure to patients, physicians, as well as you yourself working in the field.

 

[ADSigMel]

I think that if you have experience closely observing a doctor's day in practice, you're good, whether it's called "shadowing" or not. I have about 40 hours of shadowing in primary care, but I've also got about 1500-2000 hours as an ER scribe. Suffice it to say that I learned A LOT more scribing than I did shadowing.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

FWIW I have 10,000 hours of paid clinical exp in surgery and primary care, and I was told by an adcom to get some primary care shadowing, even though I've been providing primary care as a provider and have worked directly with surgeons and physicians (I also have ~100 hours of shadowing non-primary care specialties).