If you shadowed a doctor, for how long did you shadow her/him? Or, how much time do you recommend students shadow?
Direct one-to-one contact when I was a senior in high school--about 8 hours. Working in a hospital as an allied health professional and having constant contact with various physicians--about 4 1/2 years Soooo...let's hope that's good enough. Addendum: To answer your second question, my advisor recommended that you have enough experience to know you (1) see the good and the ugly of medicine (2) enjoy the day to day activities physicians endure before you jump into this medical school adventure and (3) can answer interview questions with intelligent, truthful answers about health care. However, with HIPPA, it's tough, I have found, to just shadow doctors at will...or find doctors, that you do not know personally, that will let you mosey around with them "shadowing" like you may want...
i did a month-long shadowing thing back when i was in college and haven't done any since then. i was there 5 days a week, 8-10 hours a day. 1) med schools value clinical volunteer work over shadowing (found this out at the Old Pre-Meds conference where some Deans and whatnot spoke) So I've spent the past couple years focusing on my hopsital volunteering 2)In terms of getting a feel for things, I think i would have gotten as much out of a week or so, but I certainly enjoyed my month.
I have probably done right around 80 hours or so...between spending about 5 days with an IM and one day each with anesthesia and rad. oncology... Also learned a lot while going through chemo and rad. therapy...and while volunteering in the ER.
I've got the parental connection to medicine, so I've been shadowing basically since I was in primary school. My dad used to let me sit in the observation room during surgeries when I was 8 or 9 and I gowned up for my first one at 13 to watch live. Now that I'm almost 30, I'd say I've got hundreds of hours of shadowing both surgical and FP.
