<p>I'm interested in the Neurosurgery field, but I'm currently shadowing a liver doctor. Does it matter to colleges whether or not I shadow a liver or neurosurgeon ??</p>
<p>No. Does not matter.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of medical students will change their mind multiple times when it comes to specialty during medical school. Assuming you get to medical school in the first place, the likelihood you’ll actually continue to proceed onto a neurosurgery residency is very small. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just really, really, really hard to predict what you’ll enjoy most about being a physician. In the end, when you haven’t rotated through the OR, the hospital, the clinics, and so on, you can’t know where you’re meant to end up. </p>
<p>Case in point, although I knew I wanted to do something with pediatrics, when I came into med school, I wasn’t sure if that meant a surgical residency or just regular pediatrics. At the end of my 3rd year of med school, I thought I was going to do a combined medicine/pediatrics residency followed by a peds pulmonology or cardiology fellowship to manage patients as that transition from peds to adult care in those fields. I accepted clinic as standard part of my life, even though I really didn’t like it. Early in my 4th year of med school, I did a rotation in the peds ICU…and fell in love. It had everything I wanted, and best of all, zero time in the clinic, everything was in the hospital. I ended up choosing a straight peds residency, picking a program that has a heavy dose of emergency room shifts instead of clinic time…</p>
<p>So no one will care what specialty you follow, so long as you get exposure to what life as a physician is like.</p>