I am a physical therapist and have been working at a Rehab hospital for 3 years. It actually never occurred to me to spend time outside of work specifically shadowing docs to put on my application. I just got my first secondary and it has a specific space for dates, times and names of physicians shadowed. I guess I was stupid not to have considered that, but here I am I have already applied and dont have any specific information to put down!!! I have made an effort to observe physicians in my hospital outside my daily work activities. For example I have watched procedures done by the pulmonologist, I have gone to patient/family medical conferences to discuss prognosis etc, I have even observed surgeries etc but I never kept track of names and dates because I was just doing it out of interest. I feel I am very aware of the daily activities of a physician and have seen daily the patient physician relationship. What should I do on the application? Estimate? not put anything and write a separate paragraph elsewhere? A cant believe I did this!
Any advice on similar situations would be great.
Continue the application and leave that blank. If you did not do it, don’t write it down.
What is the definition of shadowing? I feel like not putting anything implies I haven’t observed physicians which is not accurate at all! I have spent many hours observing, I just did out of my curiosity and interest so I didn’t log every hour of it to regurgitate later on the application. My estimate of my out of work observations would be easily over 100 hrs (from pediatric, surgical, oncology etc!) plus daily observation during the course of my day.
That’s a strange thing to have on the secondary. Don’t beat yourself up over it.
Don’t worry about it. In the grand scheme of things, that’s a minor detail.
FWIW, I didn’t have any shadowing at all, either, and all of my healthcare experience was pre-hospital. I was asked about it at every interview, and my explanation that as part of my EMS, I had spent a decent amount of time hanging out in the emergency department when not on calls talking with physicians and observing seemed to be satisfactory.
Thanks that does make me feel better. I think I will put down a few very specific experiences I can approximate hours/dates for (surgical observation etc) and then just explain the rest in the “other things you want us to know” section at the end of the application.
I agree with Emergency! I think part of why schools look for shadowing is to see if you understand the medical system. You express that understanding through your other experiences. Don’t worry about it.