Shadowing Resources

Helpful Tips For Clinical Observation

• Make sure to track your hours of volunteering and shadowing. Using Google calendar or a Microsoft Word document are both easy ways to keep track of hours.
• Dress professionally when going to volunteer or shadow. Dress pants and nice shoes (not sneakers or boots) are important to wear.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you are shadowing. It’s important to learn from the experience, so ask the physician, nurses, and residents questions, just not when they are in the middle of talking to or treating a patient.
• Start volunteering/shadowing early on. Students applying for medical school need to accumulate a lot of hours of shadowing and volunteering to get into medical school. It is a very important part of your application.