I know, if you are a pre-med, there is a lot to tackle on your path towards medical school! But today, I’m going to help you check off one of those overwhelming requirements from your list: shadowing.
Let’s explore the ins and outs of shadowing in the medical field and find the often elusive answer to the question: How many shadowing hours for medical school do you really need?
This post is all about finding out how many shadowing hours for medical school is necessary.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure here.
How Many Shadowing Hours for Medical School
What Is Shadowing?
Shadowing involves following and closely observing the roles and duties of (in our case) a physician in their work environment. This process is not exclusive to the medical field, but it is extremely helpful for pre-meds at the beginning of their medical careers.
As you observe the physician you’re shadowing, you learn about what it’s like to work in this profession on a daily basis. Though you will not have the opportunity to do many hands-on tasks, you will be able to witness their daily routine firsthand.
This will help you to evaluate whether or not being a doctor in general or a specific area of the medical field will be a good fit for you. After all, there are over 135 medical specialties and subspecialties according to the AAMC. And although you don’t have to decide until much later in medical school, this is the perfect opportunity to get a better idea of the work of physicians in different specialties.
Required vs. Recommended Shadowing Hours
Not all medical schools require shadowing hours from their potential students. In an AAMC survey conducted in 2016, 87% of medical school admissions officers stated that they accept alternatives to clinical shadowing. However, most schools will either recommend or require a minimum number of shadowing hours. The range varies immensely across the country, with some asking for only 12 to 24 hours, while others shoot for more than 75 hours.
As a general rule, you should aim toward the top of the ranges listed by the schools you’re interested in. But I personally would recommend not to do more than 40 hours! Why?
Because once you have some shadowing under your belt, it’s better to put your time toward earning hands-on clinical experience instead. Both shadowing and clinical experience are necessary to help you build up stellar applications for the schools you want to attend.
What About Virtual Shadowing?
If you don’t have time to fit in as many shadowing hours as you want in person, why not try your hand at virtual shadowing instead? Telemedicine has been on the rise ever since the pandemic, so it makes sense to use this avenue as another resource to gain more experience.
Virtual shadowing offers several advantages over in-person opportunities. For one, you can shadow professionals outside your local area, even outside your state. Not only does this make it easier to fit shadowing hours into your schedule, but it also allows you to shadow professionals from a wider variety of specializations and backgrounds.
Let’s say you randomly end up with a free half day in your schedule. Thanks to telemedicine and virtual shadowing, you can put that time toward your shadowing hours without even having to leave the comfort of your home!
Why Is Shadowing Even Important for Medical School Applicants?
For premedical students who are unsure what they want to do with medicine, shadowing is a great way to experience different parts of the medical field before actually committing to a career path, like going to medical school. It might open you up to a profession you didn’t even know existed. Or, it could show you that the path you thought you wanted to follow isn’t really the right choice for you.
Even if you do know for sure what you want to do with medicine, shadowing is still an important part of the journey for all medical school applicants. It provides you with good experience you can draw from in your interviews and applications to show that you have a passion and a strong interest in the medical field. Use those experiences to fuel your answers to interview questions and craft a strong, compelling personal statement.
If you could use some real-life examples of how you could use such experience in your essays, sign up for my Free Premed Workshop!
Here, you will not only learn the exact framework I used for my personal statement, but also how to identify residency bias, create a strong school list and lots of *hidden* mistakes you want to avoid.
This 60-90 minute workshop is jam-packed with tips and strategies and I promise to make every minute worth your while!
The Difference Between Shadowing and Clinical Experience
Though they may seem similar on the surface, shadowing and clinical experience are very different. Shadowing mainly involves passive observation. When you shadow, you will have limited interactions with patients and other health professionals. Any tasks you complete during this phase most likely will not qualify as hands-on experience.
Clinical experience, on the other hand, does involve hands-on interactions with patients and their care. Medical schools look at clinical experience as a demonstration of a student’s interest in medicine and their commitment to the medical field.
Gaining clinical experience shows that you have taken the initiative to jumpstart your career and start learning what it’s like to work in medicine firsthand before attending medical school.
Here are some examples of ways you can earn hands-on clinical experience:
- Medical scribing
- Volunteering in a free clinic
- Becoming an EMT or first responder
- Performing clinical research
- Training to be a CNA
Learn more about how to get clinical experience as well as the best pre-med jobs in these blog posts.
When Should I Start Shadowing?
You can start shadowing whenever you’re ready, but you definitely want to have a solid base of both shadowing and clinical experience before you submit your medical school applications. Trust me, it’ll be a big plus to be a more successful applicant and super helpful to draw from those experiences for writing your essays and nailing your medical school interviews.
If you have time during the summer while still in undergraduate, you should try shadowing a physician full-time to establish a strong foundation of shadowing hours before you start moving on to clinical experience. I spent the summer after my sophomore year of undergraduate shadowing an orthopedic surgeon, and that experience solidified my dream of applying to medical school. From that point forward, I was hooked!
It’s worth keeping in mind that you don’t have to limit your shadowing opportunities to one country either. I had the opportunity to shadow abroad in Spain, and it was an amazing experience. Broaden your horizons, and don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone!
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way just how important a combination of shadowing and clinical experience is to your medical school applications.
My first application cycle ended with one interview at Case Western where I was waitlisted. Before I applied the second time, I made sure to gain meaningful clinical experience on top of my shadowing, while working as an EMT. This was one (of many) factors that ended up earning me 10 acceptances in my second application cycle.
You don’t want to leave it to chance and play trial and error with your medical school application? In my online course Road to Acceptance, I guide pre-meds like you through their entire application process! This includes step-by-step video lessons, worksheets, ready-to-fill templates, checklists and other tools to make this journey 10x easier (and more successful) for you.
Ready to take full control of your application? Then this is for you!
How to Make the Most of Your Shadowing Hours
Once you have your shadowing gig lined up, how do you make sure you maximize your experience? Here are some quick tips to help you stay on top of shadowing.
1. Write About It
Journaling about your experiences is a great way to record what you’ve learned and internalize it. It will also be useful to have in-depth journal entries as a reference when writing about your shadowing hours in your personal statement. You may even want to read over your entries to refresh your mind before your medical school interviews.
2. Network
Working in a clinic opens you up to a whole network of other health professionals. Introduce yourself, exchange contact information, and show interest in staying connected. By building these relationships early on, you can set yourself up for future opportunities like more shadowing, clinical experience, or even full-time careers.
3. Be Open to Feedback
Shadowing is all about learning. So you have to remain open to feedback from the person you’re shadowing and their colleagues. Even though you won’t have many hands-on opportunities in a shadowing environment, you can still show initiative. You can do this by asking how you can improve or how you can maximize your learning experience.
4. Prepare Beforehand
Conduct initial research about the role you’ll be shadowing so you can enter into the experience with a baseline understanding. That foundation of knowledge will allow you to hit the ground running. And absorb more information right away by speeding up the usual learning curve.
Questions to Ask While Shadowing
You can also use shadowing as an opportunity to ask questions that you won’t be able to answer anywhere else. There are so many different types of people working in the medical field, and they all have unique perspectives.
Use this chance to absorb as much information as you can about potential challenges and benefits of the career, the journey to get to that position, and what it’s like to work in that field.
Examples of valuable questions include:
- What do you like best about your job?
- What do you find most challenging about your job?
- Why did you choose to work in this field?
- What is your typical work schedule?
- What was your career journey after undergraduate?
- How many medical schools did you apply to?
- How did you choose your medical school?
- What was the hardest part of medical school?
- What do you wish you knew before going to medical school?
- What qualities should someone have if they want to pursue a medical career?
For more inspiration, go to my blog post What Are the Best Questions to Ask When Shadowing a Doctor? to get the most out of your shadowing experience.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON HOW MANY SHADOWING HOURS FOR MEDICAL SCHOOL
Shadowing is a foundational experience for all future medical students. Don’t let the opportunity pass you by! You get to learn more about what it’s like to work in medicine, find your niche, and, most importantly, beef up your medical school applications. To sum it up, I would aim for 40 shadowing hours and afterwards focus more on hands-on clinical experience.
But don’t just passively walk through those hours, make them extra valuable for you by asking the right questions and using the tips in this blog posts.
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