Shadowing - what departments?

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Mandek

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I just got the application for shadowing in the mail. It asks us to list THREE preferred departments we want to shadow in. Whats the best department to shadow? I have shadowed a dermatologist before. I would really like to shadow a cardiologist, what other departments are good to shadow in?
 
Family practice. If you're around long enough you'll see the same patients 2 or 3 times. It allows you to experience a continuity of care versus referral care. You'll also get a big exposure to the clerical side of medicine.
 
heres a list (from their website)

Allergy
Anesthesiology
Cardiology
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Dentistry
Dermatology
Ear, Nose, Throat
Emergency Medicine
Endocrinology
Family Practice
Gastroenterology
Gynecology
Infectious Diseases
Internal Medicine
Nephrology
Neurosurgery
Neurology
Obstetrics
Oncology
Ophthalmology
Oral/Maxillo-Facial Surgery
Orthopedics
Pathology
Pediatrics
Pediatric Cardiology
Periodontics
Physiatry
Plastic Surgery
Podiatry
Psychiatry
Pulmonary Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Radiology
Rheumatology
Surgery
Urology
Vascular Surgery

http://www.sharonregional.com/FindADoctor.htm#39
 
i enjoyed my time shadowing two orthopaedic surgeons. one has a pediatrics fellowship, the other did his fellowship for sports medicine, so i saw quite a variety of cases. the surgeries i observed were pretty interesting, too. one of them assisted with a spinal surgery, that was cool.
 
I guess the question I should ask -- which of these areas are usually harder to find someone to shadow? I am pretty sure I have to pick any three and I would be able to shadow them. thats why i want to shadow someone which would be pretty interesting...and plus something thats usually find to find to shadow.
 
There should be a sticky thread about experiences of shadowing different fields! that would be awesome.
 
I think it's a question of what interests you. If you have an idea about what all the departments are, you should be able to pick 3 fairly easily. Look up descriptions on the net.


Note: Dentistry, podiatry, and periodontics are not medical specialties.
 
I think it's a question of what interests you. If you have an idea about what all the departments are, you should be able to pick 3 fairly easily.

I don't think anyone would frown upon you checking out internal medicine over say oncology or whatever.

Dentistry, podiatry, and periodontics are not medical specialties, however. To enter into these you must go to dental or podiatric school.

Yeah, I know. I just copied and pasted the departments from their website.

I picked Cardiothoracic Surgery, Cardiology and Neurosurgery. Looking fwd to it!
 
I would pick one surgical, one inpatient based medical and one outpatient based medical.

I liked shadowing surgeons the most because the patient is knocked out so they don't mind you being there. 🙂

3 I'd pick and why:

CT Surgery - don't have to know much to have an idea of what's going on, usually (although becoming less common) a large incision to look through, get to watch a human being stop another's heart and swap it out, downside: lots of gore and possible bad outcomes

Neurosurgery - If you love the CNS or PNS, it doesn't get any better than this. Downside: tougher to know what's going on, LONG procedures with not much action for an observer, can have a ton of bad outcomes.

Cardiology - one of the more approachable IM specialties for a pre-med, most of us know what an EKG is, what cardiac enzymes mean, etc. The cath lab is pretty cool with observers. Downside: not surgical.

*edit* - you beat me to it! Great minds think alike . . . enjoy.
 
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I liked shadowing surgeons the most because the patient is knocked out so they don't mind you being there. 🙂

3 I'd pick and why:

CT Surgery - don't have to know much to have an idea of what's going on, usually (although becoming less common) a large incision to look through, get to watch a human being stop another's heart and swap it out, downside: lots of gore and possible bad outcomes

Neurosurgery - If you love the CNS or PNS, it doesn't get any better than this. Downside: tougher to know what's going on, LONG procedures with not much action for an observer, can have a ton of bad outcomes.

Cardiology - one of the more approachable IM specialties for a pre-med, most of us know what an EKG is, what cardiac enzymes mean, etc. The cath lab is pretty cool with observers. Downside: not surgical.

*edit* - you beat me to it! Great minds think alike . . . enjoy.

Does this mean I am getting a 40 on the MCAT? lol.... 🙂
 
Here are ones I've shadowed during high school/undergrad:

Orthopaedic Surgeons: Very cool procedures (hip replacement, hammer toe, knee replacement). Usually fairly quick surgeries and fairly easy to see what's going on.

Interventional Radiologist/Cardiologist: Pretty much watched them do angioplasty/stents all day. They were really nice and would take a few minutes here and there between cases pointing out things as they were reviewing ECGs and other images. For the actual procedures you'll probably be staying in the "control room" watching on the monitors there. May see some stress test stuff. I would think with a normal cardiologist you'll see more clinical/office stuff and see more doctor-patient interaction.

ENT: Was a fairly large private office/surgery practice. The Doc was real nice and saw a good mix of clinical visits as well as sinus surgeries (mostly kids).

Emergency Med: Probably my favorite. LOTS of doctor-patient interaction and saw a lot of different stuff.... cool/nasty infections, trauma, general sickies, pysch patients, minor procedures, etc. Went several times and saw a lot, everything from the normal non-emergency "my stomach hurts", to motorcycle accident victim with foot hanging off. This hospital was a large teaching hospital so I pretty much spent all my time with the residents, but they were real nice, and since they were not much older than me, we talked about a lot of non-medical stuff.

I also got extremely lucky and thanks to that particular Doc, I rode/flew with the local Life Flight (Helicopter rescue) crew on a few calls, amazing!

Anyway, just see what you're interested in. I second the idea of mixing it up by spending some time with surgeons, and then more clinical or primary care type specialties.

When you do go pay attention to how much paperwork can be involved, I know it surprised me the first couple times.
 
I would pick one surgical, one inpatient based medical and one outpatient based medical.

I'd definitely agree with this advice. Another thing is that with whatever surgical area you pick, you are going to want to pick something where you can see what it going on from far away. Neurosurgery is great, but hard to see from far away. Ortho is pretty good (I did it).
 
Here are ones I've shadowed during high school/undergrad:

Orthopaedic Surgeons: Very cool procedures (hip replacement, hammer toe, knee replacement). Usually fairly quick surgeries and fairly easy to see what's going on.

Interventional Radiologist/Cardiologist: Pretty much watched them do angioplasty/stents all day. They were really nice and would take a few minutes here and there between cases pointing out things as they were reviewing ECGs and other images. For the actual procedures you'll probably be staying in the "control room" watching on the monitors there. May see some stress test stuff. I would think with a normal cardiologist you'll see more clinical/office stuff and see more doctor-patient interaction.

ENT: Was a fairly large private office/surgery practice. The Doc was real nice and saw a good mix of clinical visits as well as sinus surgeries (mostly kids).

Emergency Med: Probably my favorite. LOTS of doctor-patient interaction and saw a lot of different stuff.... cool/nasty infections, trauma, general sickies, pysch patients, minor procedures, etc. Went several times and saw a lot, everything from the normal non-emergency "my stomach hurts", to motorcycle accident victim with foot hanging off. This hospital was a large teaching hospital so I pretty much spent all my time with the residents, but they were real nice, and since they were not much older than me, we talked about a lot of non-medical stuff.

I also got extremely lucky and thanks to that particular Doc, I rode/flew with the local Life Flight (Helicopter rescue) crew on a few calls, amazing!

Anyway, just see what you're interested in. I second the idea of mixing it up by spending some time with surgeons, and then more clinical or primary care type specialties.

When you do go pay attention to how much paperwork can be involved, I know it surprised me the first couple times.

Thanks 👍
 
+1 to interventional radiology. I shadowed a urologist that used a lot of image guided operations. The IR people were smart, nice, and really good. They said they got to help out on a ton of different procedures and work with some cool technology - sounds like a relatively fun specialty. Of course, it's a little weird to get used to wearing lead aprons all day - that little beep from the fluoroscope eventually makes you realize you're being irradiated. 🙂
 
Where/how did you get an application to shadow?

Thanks!
 
Thanks for the response - I've already been accepted to dental school but my boyfriend will be applying to med school next year . . . any advice for him to get some more shadowing experience (and how did you get an application?)

Thanks again!
 
Out of your list, i've "star"ed the ones I would find interesting. You just have to know what you'd find stimulating.

Allergy
Anesthesiology
*Cardiology
*Cardiothoracic Surgery
Dentistry
Dermatology
*Ear, Nose, Throat
*Emergency Medicine
Endocrinology
Family Practice
Gastroenterology
Gynecology
*Infectious Diseases
*Internal Medicine
Nephrology
*Neurosurgery
*Neurology
*Obstetrics
Oncology
*Ophthalmology
*Oral/Maxillo-Facial Surgery
Orthopedics
Pathology
Pediatrics
*Pediatric Cardiology
Periodontics
*Physiatry
*Plastic Surgery
Podiatry
Psychiatry
Pulmonary Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Radiology
Rheumatology
*Surgery
Urology
Vascular Surgery
 
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I've had a lot of experience in three areas which are ENT, invasive cardiology, and family practice. In my experience doctors differ a lot in how they involve you in the process, so it is good to try out a few different specialties and doctors.

ENT is good because it is a good mix of surgery and clinic. I have followed around quite a few ENT surgeons and nothing is more amazing than a cochlear implant operation or a laryngectomy. It is also really fun to see the same patients come in for check ups on how their operations have gone.

Invasive Cardiology has been a fun experience. I only know one cardiologist really well, but it is really fun to follow him. He has scrubbed me in every time I have been with him and I have gotten to see all kinds of heart catheter procedures with him.

Family practice is really good because you get to see how the whole system of medicine works as far as how pateints are seen first by the primary then refered to the specialists. The doctors I have shadowed in this field have to deal with a wide variety of diseases and develop relationships with their patients which is pretty fun also. On one day you can see things as diverse as heart disease or gout, all kinds of stuff.

Id suggest that you pick the field that is most appealing to you first, but if I had to pick just one it would be ENT because of all the really strange things you get to see/ scrubbing in for operations.
 
Where did you get this app?
 
Where did you get this app?

It's not a standardized app or something. I guess where this particular person is going to shadow, or maybe it's through a health program or something, they apparently have an application to fill out.

There's not one set way to setup a shadowing "time". Ask around with your local pre-med groups and local hospitals/clinics and tell them you would like to shadow some physicians and see what their process is. Or if you have any friends/family in the area ask if they have any physician friends that you could ask to shadow. Or even, open up the phonebook and start calling.
 
I've shadowed A LOT of doctors. I think one of the best was emergency medicine simply because of the huge variety. It really is hard to pick up the nuances with some of the stuff until you get further along. I honestly found the cardiology stuff boring because it involved watching a couple stress tests, talking to a few patients and telling 3/4s of them to quit smoking, going up to the ICU and reading a chard, going back down and telling more people to get their cholesterol down, check out some EKGs, sign more papers. In the ER I got more hands on. I used the equipment, reduced fractures etc. Orthopedics and general surgery were both fairly interesting, but it is a mixed bag. GI was good because I got to see a bunch of procedures. WHen you don't know much, procedures are the best thing. After about 5 hours I kind of didn't expect anything special bouncing from room to room in the office.

I've shadowed General/vascular surgeons, OBGYN, ER, Radiology/cardiovascular radiology/neuroradiology, GI, Pulmonology, Urology, Orthopedic surgery, Cardiology, anesthesiology, internal medicine and family medicine. I've also hopped in to watch some neurosurgery stuff, breast surgery, derm, and critical care. (My dad is a doc, so growing up I spend a lot of time just chilling out in the hospital)
 
Most anesthesiologists don't mind having someone shadow them. I mean, they're sitting there reading a magazine anyway, having someone to chat with is nice.
 
I had the fortune (or misfortune depending on the angle) of seeing someone crash with the anesthesiologist. The major advantage is the sheer variety of procedures you get to watch. In one day the the anes. doc may do ortho, general surgery, obgyn, and whatever else all at once. THe ones I was with also liked to talk about the physiology and help guide what was going on...which was nice. Sometimes the surgeon is a little too focused to chit-chat
 
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