shadowing more than 1 doctor?

[kunals]

I currently shadow one surgeon on a regular basis but i see a lot of people on sdn who usually have more than one doctor shadowed on their ec's so is this a recommended thing or not. I guess what im trying to ask is, is it a waste of time to shadow multiple doctors instead of doing other volunteer work or community service?

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[ucbsmd]

Its always a good idea to get some variety in your shadowing. If your primarily shadowing a surgeon at this point, consider shadowing someone in medicine or one of its subspecialities or a FM/pediatrician.

 

[NKChemEng]

I currently shadow one surgeon on a regular basis but i see a lot of people on sdn who usually have more than one doctor shadowed on their ec's so is this a recommended thing or not. I guess what im trying to ask is, is it a waste of time to shadow multiple doctors instead of doing other volunteer work or community service?

No, it's important to have several. Shadowing is a bit different than volunteering, because you're not expected to commit to one thing. Shadowing exists to give you insight into as many specialties and careers in medicine as possible, so it's best to shadow each doctor a little bit, but shadow as many as you can to gain breadth over depth.

 

[aSagacious]

The point of shadowing (or clinical experience in general) is to obtain some reasonable perception of a good number of representative work environments that a doc might work in. You might not need to shadow more docs per se, but you might want to volunteer in a variety of departments (kill 2 birds) or find a job in a healthcare setting.

 

[Barcu]

I currently shadow one surgeon on a regular basis but i see a lot of people on sdn who usually have more than one doctor shadowed on their ec's so is this a recommended thing or not. I guess what im trying to ask is, is it a waste of time to shadow multiple doctors instead of doing other volunteer work or community service?

You need to do volunteer work or community service more than shadow so don't give those up.

Most people shadow a few doctors of different specialties. You don't really need to shadow a doctor regularly for an extended amount of time. It would be better to shadow one doctor for a while and then switch to a doctor of another specialty. I think I saw one advisor said a good minimum would be 40-60 hours over three specialties. As you can see, shadowing is more breadth than depth.

If you want to shadow one doctor for hundreds of hours, that's fine too. But you want to see different areas of medicine so try and shadow another specialty. Though, you should give up your surgeon shadowing instead of the volunteer work if you need to give up something.

 

[kunals]

Thank you for all the input it looks like im gonna have to find more community service and possibly volunteer in different departments to get a good look of medicine as a whole

 

[KindofBlue]

Here's an awesome checklist (PDF file) about shadowing made by an SDN member (Gnomes).
It will give you some insight as to what you should look for in a shadowing experience.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=17312&d=1310259342