Shadowing

[copon]

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I am fortunate enough to be close to three doctors, 2 E.R and a Radiologist. I will start shadowing them this month, one of the E.R. doctors is kind enough to let me shadow him his full shift (12hrs) once a month here on out and I'm really stoked because it's a trauma center.
The radiologist is letting me shadow twice a month for 2 hours each time.
That will give me more than 200 shadowing hours by the time I send in my applications but I will have less than 100 hours volunteering.
Will this be a sufficient amount of volunteering even though I will have plenty of shadowing?
Also, I volunteer in my community for a number of things but I figure that is separate from hospital volunteering, is that right?

Thanks!

 

[deleted357625]

A little below i would say is fine. But how much volunteer hours are you expecting? 100 is perfect tho if you can pull it off, anything above that is unnecessary.

Also, have you been involved in anything non-related to medicine?

 

[copon]

Yeah, I am involved with teaching young kids how to play various sports, as well as the local boy scouts in the area.

I am going to try and get the volunteer hours above 100.

I appreciate the reply!

 

[Barcu]

I am fortunate enough to be close to three doctors, 2 E.R and a Radiologist. I will start shadowing them this month, one of the E.R. doctors is kind enough to let me shadow him his full shift (12hrs) once a month here on out and I'm really stoked because it's a trauma center.
The radiologist is letting me shadow twice a month for 2 hours each time.
That will give me more than 200 shadowing hours by the time I send in my applications but I will have less than 100 hours volunteering.
Will this be a sufficient amount of volunteering even though I will have plenty of shadowing?
Also, I volunteer in my community for a number of things but I figure that is separate from hospital volunteering, is that right?

Thanks!

You need more clinical volunteering.

The average is 1.5 years and around 200 hours (and this is purely clinical volunteering).

Shadowing is good, but you only need 100 hours or so. And it does not replace clinical volunteering. While shadowing, you just observe. While volunteering, you actually do stuff and get to interact with patients.

Other non-medical volunteering is also very good, but it too does not replace clinical volunteering.

 

[copon]

How do you go about getting clinical experience? Do you sign up through the hospital? Do you need to have any type of certification?
Thanks.

 

[kjeans88]

I am going to star shadowing an ER doctor in a few days. Is there any advice you can give me?

 

[deleted357625]

How do you go about getting clinical experience? Do you sign up through the hospital? Do you need to have any type of certification?
Thanks.

To start clinical experience, you can jut go on the hospital website and there will be a volunteer service section, and all you basically have to do is notify the volunteer coordinator or if they have an online app, you can just fill it out then turn it in over at the hospital very simple.

No certification is needed, those are only for certain fields such as EMT etc.

 

[deleted357625]

I am going to star shadowing an ER doctor in a few days. Is there any advice you can give me?

If your really interested, always have questions in hand, but you need to know when too ask them. Ask him various questions of your interest at a reasonable time when he's not interacting with a patient.

Overall, just sit back and watch for the most part, no need to keep talking etc unless he's really chill, yea everyone is different.

You want to establish a good connection because at the end of this, you can always ask for a LOR from him.

 

[FrkyBgStok]

for volunteering in a hospital you may have go through some classes for stuff like mandatory reporting, patient confidentiality, yadda, yadda, and you will need more if you would like to work.

as far as advice for shadowing the physician, keep your mouth shut. you are there to observe. ask any question you would like when you are not in the room, but when you are with patients, you don't make a sound and you basically stay completely out of the way. at the very end when the doctor is walking out i usually say thank you as a "thanks for letting me observe" but that is all.

 

[Catalystik]

That will give me more than 200 shadowing hours by the time I send in my applications but I will have less than 100 hours volunteering.
Will this be a sufficient amount of volunteering even though I will have plenty of shadowing?

Also, I volunteer in my community for a number of things but I figure that is separate from hospital volunteering, is that right?

You will enter your clinical volunteering separately from your nonmedical community service on the application.

There is no one right formula for a proper amount of clinical experience vs shadowing. Some get by with 40 hours of shadowing or less. About 50 hours seems average. I usually suggest 60-80 hours split among 2-3 docs, including office-based primary care.

For clinical experience, some get by with less than a 100 hours. The average seems to be about 150 hours gained over 1.5 years. Some have thousands of patient contact hours through the workplace. Since you'll want your application to appeal to a broad range of schools, you don't want to skimp on this, so aim for average, at least. If you don't quite meet that, then continue your medical volunteerism after you submit and advise med schools of the augmented hours through update letters (it's probably a good idea to do this regardless).

The point isn't so much to have an exact amount of hours, but what you got out of it: Did you adequately explore medicine as a career, can you answer related questions at interviews when adcomms try to elicit experiential responses, do you understand the dynamic between a doctor and patient (across many patient types), between doctor and staff/clinical environment/insurance companies/legal system. Understanding related ethical issues will be important too. Etc.