shadowing

How much shadowing will you need to apply to medical school? Where should you start looking for doctors to shadow if you have no connections? Is it even possible to shadow amid the COVID-19 pandemic?‍ You probably have many questions about shadowing as a pre-med, and we’re here to answer all of them and give you the foundational knowledge you’ll need for this aspect of your medical school application.

The pre-med path often seems less like a path and more like a smooth-faced, dastardly vertical cliff to climb. Which foothold should we pre-meds choose? How many should we choose in order to stay latched onto the unruly rock? While we all latched onto the plethora of virtual shadowing and clinical opportunities that popped up during the pandemic, is it time to let go? In this interview, Dr. Christopher Behringer surmises how he would have approached shadowing requirements and medical school applications had he been a pre-med right now. Dr. Behringer also discusses the exciting new ways he and the HEAL Clinical Education Network are working to make the pre-med, medical school, and residency paths more integrated than ever before! 

Imagine being a pre-med student in Grant, Nebraska. There are no physicians in your city, the closest clinic is miles away, and you have no connections with anyone in the healthcare field. But your dream is to go to medical school, and all of them require shadowing hours, something you simply don’t have the luxury of pursuing. Physician shadowing is often considered to be one of the most important things a pre-med student can do to prepare for applications and get real-world experience. But while shadowing can be an incredible asset, it’s not always feasible for every pre-med. 

Do you understand all the challenges that lie between you and your dream medical school? You might recognize obstacles like obtaining a high GPA or taking the MCAT, but there’s a challenge that blindsides many: describing your shadowing experience. Getting shadowing is difficult enough, and its true benefit is often lost through poor or common descriptions. In this article, we’ll provide you with some do’s and don’ts on how to make your shadowing experiences shine while analyzing samples of students’ writing.

“Virtual shadowing is a waste of time.” All of us in the premed community have probably heard or thought this over the past year as we casually sat in our beds and watched clinical shadowing videos. We may also have wondered, does virtual shadowing really count for anything? As fellow pre-meds, we think that virtual shadowing can definitely play a strong role in your medical school applications if applied effectively. Here’s how you can strengthen your application and maximize your medical knowledge by combining virtual and in person shadowing opportunities!

Writing about your virtual shadowing seems like a difficult task. Due to the passive nature of shadowing, it’s already tricky to write about it compellingly, and the virtual format only makes this more challenging. But it can definitely be done, especially if you’ve gone out of your way to find optimal virtual shadowing and taken steps to get the most out of the experiences. We’re here to answer all your questions about writing about your virtual shadowing experiences, including some do’s and don’ts and an example for you to emulate. If you follow this advice, you’ll be able to show medical schools the value of your virtual shadowing experience in a memorable, convincing narrative!

Virtual shadowing experiences can run the gamut in terms of their quality - ranging from pre-recorded videos with no interaction to interactive live observations with physicians and patients in real-time. With this high level of variance in mind, it’s understandable for medical schools to be skeptical and apply a degree of scrutiny to applicants’ virtual shadowing hours. But from the applicants’ perspective, this scrutiny can seem incredibly unfair given how difficult it has been to secure meaningful shadowing (whether in-person or online) amid pandemic restrictions that have lasted over a year. We want to consider both viewpoints - the schools and the applicants - to posit our argument about what kinds of shadowing that medical schools should accept for the 2021-2022 cycle.

As the opening of the 2021-2022 medical school cycle looms near, many pre-med applicants have a pressing question on their minds: in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, how will medical schools evaluate virtual clinical experiences? Well, we’re here to help answer that question. We have gathered data and responses from 162 MD and DO schools to assess how they will treat virtual clinical experiences and what competencies they’ll be looking for in these experiences. Let’s breakdown the data and analyze the qualitative responses so that you know what to expect during this upcoming cycle!

Based on what we can tell, most medical schools will accept virtual shadowing and clinical hours. That’s good news for pre-meds who have been deemed non-essential during COVID-19. However, not all virtual shadowing platforms are created equal, so you’ll need to carefully choose which ones you pursue. What makes a virtual shadowing experience worthwhile, and which platforms are the best?

Hospitals and clinics have mostly banned pre-med students from shadowing and volunteering, but medical school admissions committees continue to require hundreds of clinical hours (~300 total, 100 shadowing) in order to get in. You could opt to get an EMT or phlebotomy certification, but those essential jobs typically require 20+ hours per week, not a time commitment that most full-time students can keep. So how do you get clinical experience when you're not "essential personnel?"