<p>I am trying to get physician shadowing experience. Problem is that I have no connections with doctors whom I may shadow. I contacted hospitals in NY (where I live) not none of them have physician shadowing. Any advice on alternative volunteering that I may do? Would be a patient assistant at a hospital also be sufficient? I just do not know what I should do to get shadowing experience. I want to shadow during my breaks from college because I perform research during the school year. Please provide feedback.</p>
<p>I have the same problem. Do med school adcoms understand that not everyone has the opportunity to shadow a physician?</p>
<p>I'm interested in such program; would you please provide some links to the "physician shadowing" programs?</p>
<p>Transfer to Cornell and these two programs will match you with physicians to shadow:</p>
<p>Cornell</a> Externship Listing
Mentorship</a> Program at Gannett: Cornell University Health Services</p>
<p>You need patient contact.</p>
<p>If you don't know anyone to ask, you could try going to a practice that interests you and asking if they'd let you shadow. One of my friends did that - the physician agreed to let him shadow her and then gave him a job there.</p>
<p>I'd call doctors' offices, not hospitals. In the end, it's the physician's decision to let you follow them, and getting a hospital wide program for shadowing is probably not a priority most places. Hospitals need volunteers to help carry our their daily functions and can use almost any one from HS age to senior citizens. As such, most hospitals have volunteer offices and specific programs for attracting and training volunteers. But physician shadowing is a very specialized group of individuals who have an interest and a need, thus making the usefulness of a hospital-wide project rather unnecessary.</p>
<p>I agree with you Bigredmed, however, I do not know any physicians who work in hospitals, sadly. I mean should I just find random doctors listed under a hospital webpage and then email then asking if I could shadow them? I understand that regular hospital volunteering is useless because you really are not doing anything special-- just regular sick patient interaction. Your basically a nurse's aid. So I do not know what to do?</p>
<p>Shadowing hospitalists is probably not a good idea. </p>
<p>Call doctor's offices. The pace of a clinic is probably more conducive to shadowing anyways. If you want to see things that are hospital-based, like doing rounds, you need to follow someone who spends time in both the hospital and the clinic on a regular basis. This probably points you towards calling a surgeon's office and seeing if you can follow them. If you aren't interested in surgery, then just find a physician in a specialty that does interest you, call their OFFICE (not the hospital), and go from there.</p>
<p>Again, read the first sentence in my first post on this thread (#7). Here it is:</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'D CALL DOCTORS' OFFICES, NOT HOSPITALS.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not to be mean, but I sometimes wonder about your understanding of health care, blazin. Seriously, when you go to the doctor, do you go to the hospital? No, you go to their clinic/office and see them there. General pediatricians and internists do not spend much time in the hospital, only performing rounds when they have a patient that has been admitted...and with the increase hospitalists - those doctors who only care for patients when they are in the hospital - many primary care docs allow them (the hospitalists) to care for their patients so they (the primary care docs) don't have to go to the hospital.</p>
<p>So basically call random doctor's offices and ask if I can shadow one of their physicians because I personally do not know any physicians. Now when I call their offices, won't I typically be speaking to a secretary? If so, should I ask to speak to the doctor or just ask the secretary b/c I don't want them to think that I am nuts. Should I specifically ask about 'shadowing' or should I say I would like to help out in your office?</p>
<p>Talk to the secretary and ask about shadowing specifically, because there's a big difference between that and asking for a job.</p>
<p>Your best bet though would be to first talk to your pre-med advisor and find out if they know of any physicians near your school who historically have been welcoming to students. I realize you want to do this over breaks and all, but a doc in your college town represents a more consistently available option to shadow (serial shadowings are preferable to one and done type setups) since you're there 9 months a year, and is also more likely to have had pre-meds in the past. </p>
<p>If you absolutely refuse to do it while in school, then yes, call doctor's offices randomly. However, don't you have a normal physician that you see? I'd probably schedule an appointment sometime, just to talk about being pre-med (you don't have to be sick to see a doctor), and then broach the subject of shadowing by saying you need some experience, and if they could help you - either by letting you shadow them, or by helping you get set up with someone else they know who likes to have students - that it would be a big help.</p>
<hr>
<p>Take home point for this thread:</p>
<p>Medical schools want to see that you have some first hand observations in what it is like to be a doctor on a day to day basis, so that you can clearly ascertain that this is what you want to do. </p>
<p>I have two friends that were told they had outstanding patient contact experiences but got rejected from schools for not having enough contact with doctors. They're exit interviews (at two different schools) basically said 'we don't think you understand what it is actually like being a doctor'.</p>