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Shadowing : How Many Specialties?
The only speciality you really should include is a primary care doc. Other than that one or two other specialities would be okay. You only need around 50 hours total.
My advice: spend ample time on the medicine floors right in the trenches and see the gruesome reality before your eyes first hand. If possible, actually try to pair up with a resident and see what their day is like.
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If you are applying to any schools that truly value primary care/family med, make sure to shadow a PCP for more than a simple shift. My buddy applied to our state school with ZERO hours of primary care experience including no shadowing and told the interviewers that he was interested in family med and they called him out and said "your application tells me otherwise" Also make sure you have experience with the specialties that you are genuinely interested in.
Thanks for all the responses everyone! Which specialties count as Primary Care? My understanding is that it's going to be Family Medicine, Pediatrics, and OB/GYN, are there any others?
Psychiatry and Internal Medicine are also Primary Care. Emergency Medicine is sometimes lumped in but I disagree that it is primary care. You will have considerable difficulty shadowing a Psychiatrist, but IM,FM, and possibly OB-GYN will be much more available.
Everything depends on what ELSE you have in your application . For example I have ZERO shadowing . And 30 hours of volunteering . But I was in the army , and worked as a behavioral health technician , and I was exposed to other stuff there . And now I work in addiction treatment facility . So , - DO the shadowing , but most importantly , look at the rest of the application and make a STORY. Make sure whoever reads it sees that you WERE exposed to medicine . You KNOW what it is about
I generally recommend to shadow at least 2 specialties: one non-operative outpatient based (preferably primary care or IM/Peds related and not like Dermatology) and one inpatient based (operative or non-operative). But really just shadow what you think you might be interested in. If you think you might be interested in ENT, shadow an ENT! If you think you might be interested in neonatal intensive care, shadow in the NICU! Just make sure you have a little bit of breadth and your shadowing doesn't just consist of orthopedic surgery and dermatology.
Well, problem with EM is that many people turn it into their PCP because of insurance and whatever other issues. You must be seen, cant say the same for an office.
To add to this, IM (hospitalists) would be a great specialty to shadow because they have a broad scope of practice. In the 8 hours of shadowing a Hospitalist, we saw upwards of 40 patients.
I would be inclined to say that's a specialist, but I am not an authority in this regard.
My son shadowed lot of specialists but he didn't shadow any primary care. However he is volunteering at a free clinic as Spanish Interpreter. Does he still need to shadow a PCP?
It would only benefit him to shadow a PCP more than a few times.
