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About the Author
Written By: Danielle Dupuis
Position, Member Since: President, Joined Fall 2018
Major & Track: Microbiology and Cell Science, Spanish Minor, Certificate of Music in Medicine, Pre-Med
Current Year: 3rd Year
Virtual shadowing is an incredible opportunity to show resilience and expand your knowledge about a wide variety of health professions from the safety of your own home. Based off of current information, medical schools will most likely accept virtual shadowing hours as legitimate for medical school applications. When choosing a virtual shadowing program, it is important to not only consider the number of hours which you obtain, but to also consider your ability to describe and share meaningful stories from your experience. Thus, we need to be careful where we dedicate our time in these virtual shadowing programs in order to get the most out of each experience.
Picking a program:
Some opportunities consist of doctors talking over PowerPoint presentations. These are passive and not very interactive, meaning that they won't truly see duties or get the full picture of a doctor’s role in the healthcare process.
Other experiences involve students learning clinical skills from recorded patient interactions. These are more involved and can truly build diagnostic skills through insight into real clinical cases and the daily demands and duties of a physician.
The most sophisticated virtual shadowing experiences involve the doctors walking pre-meds through cases themselves. These programs provide students with the best of both worlds, allowing students to experience firsthand the deductive reasoning of a physician meanwhile having the opportunity to ask questions and speak to the physician.
As you can see, there is a wide variety of shadowing experiences out there. When I was choosing a program, I considered the following criteria:
Am I actively or passively learning?
What is the format of the sessions?
What type of credit or proof can I get?
What kind of content is presented? Is it a presentation or Q&A? Both?
How close is the program to genuine, in-person shadowing?
My recommendations:
*click each heading to go to each shadowing opportunity*
Works in conjunction with this YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3VcaLvbVEpeEj60YYfbN0A/about
Free
Physician Host - Dr. Fowler
Weekly zoom sessions later uploaded to YouTube
Two hours per week with passing (70%) quiz score
Free
Wide variety of specialties covered
Sessions are recorded and available for credit
Opportunity to reach out to speakers
Free
Hosted by Dr. Ryan Gray, publisher of medschoolhq.net
Weekly online sessions and quizzes
Certificates available via quiz completion
Free and no sign-up needed
Hosted by pre-med students bringing in a rotation of physicians
Must attend sessions live, attendance taken through google forms
Very specialty-focused
I can personally attest to the quality of this program
Very limited space
Run through Google Classroom
Weekly quizzes and content videos
Apply medical knowledge through rounds with cold-calling
Complete “rounds” with Dr. Naqvi via video chat, looking at real clinical cases
Learn how to use deductive reasoning while reaching a diagnosis
View YouTube videos from last year’s sessions : https://www.youtube.com/user/naqvi10899
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