Session 36 In today's episode, Ryan welcomes a question from a student named Matt regarding getting shadowing and clinical experience - how much is enough, what better way to approach a physician, and can you shadow the same physician on a regular basis? Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast as Ryan and Rich pulls a question from the forums over at OldPreMeds.org and delivers the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Matt is a 41-year old student how is extremely excited and nervous about this endeavor; no clinical or shadowing experience; hoping to apply next June and intends to spend the next 8 months shadowing and gaining clinical experience. Will this be sufficient? Or should the application be put off for another year? Matt applied to join the local volunteer rescue squad where he is to commit 35 hours a month; what else can he do to gain clinical exposure? Matt intends to shadow a few physicians across a range of specialties and attempts to spend a bit of time with the ones that feel like the most positive experience. Is there a better approach? Is it appropriate to ask a physician to shadow on a regular basis or is there a point where you are just interrupting his or her job? Here are the insights from Ryan: When you're applying 8 months away from the next application cycle and you don't have any clinical or shadowing experience, yes it is bad. How do you know you want to be a physician without any clinical or shadowing experience? This would be the first red flag to an admissions committee person. Can you get enough clinical and shadowing experience in the next 8 months? Yes, as long as it's quality experience where you hang around enough patients in a clinical setting to know you're okay dealing with sick people. How can you get more clinical experience? Consider being a scribe or any experience where you are close enough to smell the patient. Shadowing experience Shadowing is important to understand what life is like as a physician. You don't need to shadow every specialty out there to see which one you like because that's what medical school is for where you get to rotate different specialties. Your job when shadowing is to only understand what life is like as a physician. Things to consider when shadowing: Setting Physicians working in an academic setting are different than those in an outpatient or community hospital. Try shadowing somebody in an academic hospital setting and somebody in a community hospital setting, as well as in an academic outpatient setting and in a community outpatient setting. Shadowing on a regular basis Yes, you can ask a physician on a regular basis. This is actually great as you're gaining a relationship that you can lean on later for a good letter of recommendation, hopefully. You may interrupt the workflow to some extent but not terribly. If you get a physician that says no, then that's fine and move on to another who says yes. Links and Other Resources: www.mededmedia.com