I think that one of the things that has allowed me to grow as a student has been a spirit of humility. Humility requires that you give up pride, envy, arrogance, and selfishness. Humility has given me the power to embrace failure as an opportunity to grow as opposed to feeling like I must constantly impress my peers. Humility has allowed me to realize that seeking help and looking for answers outside of myself is OK. I seek people who have walked in my shoes and been where I am going to serve as guides and mentors. Being willing to listen and mentored has smoothed my path to being a husband, university faculty, a PhD student, and soon, a medical student. Having humility allows me to treat life as a journey worth living as opposed to a race that I need to finish. My path has not been straight or easy but I’ve learned and grown from the journey and am much richer for the experiences that I have had. I also realize that the world does not revolve around me and I freely accept my position in what ultimately is God’s giant masterplan. I think that humility will allow me to value and respect the criticisms and opinions of my peers. I spend more time listening, thinking, and analyzing as opposed to complaining. Humility also does not allow me to celebrate the failures of others and instead, I try to lift up my peers. I also celebrate their triumphs. I take no joy in being right or being the first to finish; my joy comes from helping others grow and succeed while I honor God for giving me the opportunity to be a guide to others.
Saturday, January 2, 2021
Shadowing
Healthcare is a demanding profession. Whether you attend medical school, nursing school, pharmacy school or some other health professions training program, you are likely going to spend years in training and depending on exactly what you are training in, you may spend another year to 10 years in residency training (medicine and some 1-to-2-year pharmacy and DNP residency programs). There is going to be a huge cost in terms of time, missing out on special events with family, friends, and a significant other, and money spent on tuition for school as well as money lost due to not being able to work while you are in school. Thus, I strongly recommend students interested in the health professions shadow to determine if pursuing a health-related career is something that you truly want to do.
Because my track is medicine, I won’t comment on shadowing other health professions but I would imagine that the principals are similar, if not the same for other professions.
Shadowing is generally not a prerequisite for medical school; however, there are some schools that do absolutely require shadowing in addition to any other clinical experiences that you may have. It is always best to check with the individual schools that you are interested in applying to in order to find out what is expected. One of the osteopathic programs that I applied to this cycle has a stated requirement of a minimum of 40 hours of shadowing while another said on the admissions website that matriculated students have an average of 80 hours of shadowing. The other benefit of shadowing is that it gives you the opportunity to get to know a physician so that you can ask for a letter of recommendation.
How many hours should one shadow? This depends. The consensus that I’ve seen across social media has been somewhere between 40 to 100 hours. Dr. Tasha Posid, an advisor at Ohio State University, says that spending 20-30 hours with each physician shadowed should be the goal and that students should strive to gather 200-300 hours of shadowing. I would say that you should shadow to get enough experience that you can speak meaningfully on it. If that is 40 hours, great. If it’s more, that is great as well. I accumulated 200 hours of shadowing with three physicians, two DO’s and one M.D. (they represented three different specialties family medicine, cardiology, and pediatrics) and the experience was considered very valuable by A.T. Still – SOMA. I don’t think that it matters so much what specialty that you shadow; again, just be able to speak from the heart about what you gained from the experience and how it has helped to shape you and your desires to practice medicine or practice in a certain field of medicine.
There is a definite etiquette to shadowing. Obviously, you should dress appropriately, usually business casual, and while most physicians will encourage you to ask thoughtful questions, remember, their job is to tend to their patients FIRST. Don’t ask questions at inopportune moments such as during a patient exam UNLESS the physician invites you to. Make sure that you arrive on time and treat the front office staff with respect. They can help to make or break the shadowing experience. I made it a point to order an Edible Arrangement for the front office staff of each of the three physicians that I shadowed; the front office folks really helped to make my experiences valuable by scheduling me on days when the physicians had interesting cases or heavy days in clinic. This allowed me to have a much richer experience as opposed to coming into clinic on days when there was nothing going on.
How should one go about finding a physician to shadow? This is the hardest part about shadowing. Locating a willing physician may take some time but I would start with asking my primary care provider or OB/Gyn if I could shadow them or if they have colleagues who may be open to having a student in their clinic. Next, try your university pre-health office as they sometimes have special programs and affiliations with local hospitals and clinics for pre meds in need of shadowing. You can also try a ‘shotgun’ approach and email all of the clinicians in your local area to inquire about shadowing. You might start off as a hospital volunteer and as time progresses, and as you meet physicians, you might ask if you could shadow them. Just be aware that you may have to be persistent. I emailed all of the clinicians who were local to Chandler and Gilbert, AZ and ultimately, I had to start emailing physicians outside of my local area. The pediatrician that I shadowed was in Lake Havasu, AZ and the family medicine physician was in Pomona, CA. The cardiologist was in Houston, TX. My undergraduate alma mater did have a program that placed pre meds into shadowing opportunities at Mayo Clinic-Scottsdale and Mayo Clinic-Phoenix but you had to have a 3.7 or better overall GPA. Still, my attitude was that nothing was going to stop me and I got what I needed even if I had to go a little further to get it.
Last thing, no matter what, your coursework is your priority. Do not prioritize shadowing (or any other experiences) over your school work and MCAT preparation. Do not sacrifice grades in order to gain additional shadowing hours. The goal of shadowing is gain an experience that will benefit your medical school applications but if it comes at the expense of your grades or MCAT scores, that is not an experience worth pursuing.