<p>On my last post, I posted about possibly becoming a surgical tech. That way I could see how I liked the OR and get some medical experience under my belt. Although that would require about a year and a half of extra schooling. Being 24 and without a bachelors degree, I am behind a bit and do not want to take classes that are not required. I was told OR shadowing is possible so thre is no reason to become a surgical tech to get a feel for the OR anymore. Yet still, I need to find a job to get my foot in the door and a feel for medicine.
However, it seems almost every medicalj ob out there requires some sort of certification or degree. Unless of course you find a clerical position at a clinic, which doesnt offer much patient exposure. Do clerical positions even count as experience in the medical field? I guess there is Phlebotomist work. I have read that some people became an EMT for experience.
What are some of the jobs you did before medical school to get some experience? Where you refered or did you just show up and say "Hey, I need a job", at your local hosptial? Please share your past jobs or experiences in breif whether it was volunteer or paid work. Or hell, post a link if this topic has been covered before. Thanks.</p>
<p>Again, you don't need a job. You can do volunteer work, physician shadowing, clinical research, etc. Those are by far more common -- and probably better-looked-upon -- options.</p>
<p>Some students do need to combine the medical experience with a paying job for financial reasons. My husband, back in the day, worked as an orderly (guess now they are nursing assistants). Yes, you would need certification--but shouldn't take too long to pick up and could maybe be done at a local cc over summer. He felt that was a good experience and was able to work in ERs, geriatrics, surgical floors, etc to get different experiences. My son is looking at getting certified as a histology tech--better pay than most other summer jobs and also will get hospital lab experience.</p>
<p>I suspect adcoms might have a slight bias against such experiences. It's the whole scientific-approach vs. technical-experience bias. I would worry about it some.</p>
<p>Well I do have a nice job at the moment, so If I dont actually need to have paid experience, then I'd like to keep my job. Now I just got to get into some Shadowing positions to see if a medical career is right for me. Isn't OR shadowing only allowed under certain circumstances? I guess I should just call up a few doctors and see if they allow shadowing.</p>
<p>Most admissions committees don't discriminate in the type of doctor you shadow (at least as far as I can tell), though obviously certain types will personally be more interesting to you. The point of shadowing is to expose you to field and make sure you have an understanding of what being a doctor really is.</p>
<p>From personal experience, I can tell you that being a shadower, when I had no medical background, in the OR...it wasn't particularly exciting. I was a HS student shadowing an orthopedic surgeon, and because of sterile technique, and my lack of training/understanding of it, I had to stand about 12 feet away in a very particular part of the OR, so as not to contaminate the field. There really wasn't much to see. Now whether that was a product of my surgeon, the hospital, or my age, I don't know, and it's possible that things might be different...but I wouldn't hold my breath at least at the start. On the other hand, as a medical student after the first year, going into the OR after I'd had training in gloving and gowning, basic suturing, and a short primer in sterile technique...being in the OR was AWESOME! I was intimately involved in the surgery and a functional member of the team. </p>
<p>What I'm trying to say is that, while you want to get into the OR, your experience will be very dependent on your level of training, and simply put, as a novice/untrained shadowing student, what you're probably hoping for isn't going to be likely. While there's likely some middle ground between my two experiences, it's probably going to be a lot closer to my HS one than my M1.5 experience.</p>
<p>It might be easier to find places to volunteer than physicians to shadow, as most hospitals have dedicated programs/offices for volunteer placement...just something to keep in mind.</p>
<p>I agree that shadowing -- particularly in the OR -- is not all that fun for anybody pre-MS2. It's still kind of fun, and while you can't touch anything you usually don't have to stand quite so far away. Often you can stand next to the anesthesiologist, who's often quite bored and happy to talk to you anyway. I am willing to bet good money that one of the first three anes. you stand next to will call it "the best seat in the house" -- which is, by the way, not true.</p>
<p>In any case, however, I still think shadowing experience is important, to see the ways doctors are expected to behave and conduct themselves.</p>
<p>I had three. One was three weeks for sixty hours a week. One was two weeks for sixty hours a week. One was fourteen weeks, three hours a week. (I bailed on this last one.)</p>
<p>Certainly they're looking for more than just one time. How much can you learn in one day?</p>
<p>There are multiple ways to go about it. If you have a number of doctors you know personally, I think it's okay to do single sessions with a number of doctors. Of course, most people don't have a ton of doctors they know unless their parents are physicians or their parents are friends with many physicians.</p>
<p>YOu also don't have to do such time intensive shadowing experiences like BDM which certainly seem to have been done during winter or summer breaks (I don't know if they are, but they seem that way).</p>
<p>My ortho shadowing in HS was 3-5 hours a week for almost 8 months - basically all of second semester and part of the summer before I took off for college. It wasn't every week, but it was pretty frequent. I should note that I didn't put this on my AMCAS list of post-secondary experiences, but brought it up in interviews as appropriate (it tied in nicely to my explanations of how I came to want to be a doctor). During college, I randomly had a couple random shadowing chances that were just once or twice for an afternoon - I remember shadowing an allergist and one of the University Health Center's physicians at his private practice.</p>
<p>One way to find physicians to shadow, particularly specialists, is to ask your own doctors (who also are specialists) at home if they know any docs in your college town. Obviously there are some limitations and it's not a guarantee to find anyone but that's how I got in with the allergist in my college town. It helps to be able to drop that name.</p>
<p>Like I said earlier though, volunteering is usually easier to secure.</p>
<p>Well my reason for wanting to shadow right now would be for exposure to see if medicine is for me. Not for premedical application reasons. I'd like to shadow radiology as well just to see different working areas of the Hospital. As a volunteer at a hospital or clinic, do you often get moments to do any shadowing? I've read that volunteering and shadowing can go hand in hand, but am not exactly sure. I'd assume there is a waiting list to volunteer at a hospital as well. </p>
<p>And are doctors really ok with somebody following them around for that many hours out of the week? I guess if I was a doctor, I'd enjoy showing somebody what I've spent my whole life learing about. Just curious. I can ask my doctor, but he is a general practitioner, which is fine. He recommended me to go to a sleep study because I have chronic fatigue during the day possibly from sleep apnea. Perhaps there might be an opportunity there to ask about shadowing.</p>