What is the difference between shadowing and volunteering

Many have shadowed professionals for a short time. There are other colleges and universities where shadowing is more common. What we know is that our successful applicants do not have huge numbers of shadowing hours and that they are devoting that time to other relevant pursuits.

Having said that, our applicants frequently cite shadowing as one their most motivating and meaningful activities, so you should seek it out and do it when possible. But, you do not need to spend your whole summer shadowing. If you are concerned about shadowing, you can contact a pre-health advisor for thoughts.

This means that they usually volunteer for more than one summer or one academic year. Unfortunately, it is impossible to give a number of hours that an applicant should have. Many wonderful clinical opportunities only offer a small number of hours each week or month. Showing commitment to such an opportunities and having meaningful things to say about it is better than logging twice as many hours without much insight into what you are doing.

Again, consult with a pre-health advisor if you are concerned about your clinical volunteer experience or trying to figure out how to fit it into your busy schedule. Generally, your clinical experiences in college will probably include volunteering because you likely don't have the training required for a paid position where you're interacting with patients, but we cannot quantify the amount: how much of your health-related experience is for pay, or through an internship, or shadowing, or true volunteer work is all up to the individual.

In addition to clinical experience, civic engagement in other settings -- tutoring, coaching kids, helping the elderly -- are also valued, so don't turn down those opportunities just because you don't think med schools will be interested in them.

Hopefully you chose Princeton with full knowledge and appreciation of its motto re: being "in the nation's service" You probably want to focus on the things you do enjoy about being in the clinical setting and not the things that are tedious or uninteresting. A few things to remember:. If you want a more active role, consider spending the summer gaining a certification as an EMT or Certified Nursing Assistant, which will give you hands-on skills that you can use to care for patients.

We've had students who pursued certification and then worked part-time during the school year or full-time post-graduation in these positions.

Do be careful not to overstate how much you can gain from texting versus talking with patients and spending time with them face-to-face, and be sure to expand beyond this activity in preparing to show evidence of your knowledge of and experience in health and healthcare settings. Shadowing can an excellent way to gain exposure to and become informed about the everyday practice of medicine.

A shadowing experience also allows you to build a relationship with a mentor in the field and ask questions, ultimately helping you to decide if this path is the right one for you. When you contact a physician, tell the person where you found them, give a brief introduction of yourself, and what in particular interests you about their background, position, or organization.

Let the doctor know that you'd be interested in any shadowing opportunities that they can provide. If your first contact is by email, attach a copy of your resume and let them know that you're happy to connect by phone if it's helpful. If your first contact is by phone, have your calendar available in case the physician wants to schedule something right away.

Try to have an idea of what you're looking for when you shadow in case you are asked. If the doctor can't accommodate you for shadowing, you might see if they would just be willing to talk with you for an hour or so, and then put together a list of questions you might like to know more about in pursuing your interests in medicine this is often called an "informational interview".

Career Development has a great list of starting questions for informational interviews. For more ideas, read through our Shadowing Tips handout. No — you sign a statement of integrity when you apply to medical school stating that you are portraying your experiences honestly, and this will suffice. You will be asked to provide contact information for each activity that you report in your application so that schools could follow up on the experiences if desired, but for the most part, they will trust that you are being truthful in your application.

We do recommend logging your hours and your personal reflections on each shadowing experience for yourself. That way, you'll be able to easily calculate your total hours when you apply and you'll have a record of how you've grown through each experience. Excellent question!

We want shadowing experiences to be positive for students and for the physicians who are providing this valuable opportunity. A group of medical school personnel, prehealth advisers, ethicists, and others have collaborated to developed Guidelines for Clinical Shadowing Experiences for Pre-medical Students. We encourage you to read through them so that you can provide a summary for the physicians, and you can also provide them with a copy of the guidelines, or a link to the document.

Spread your time out across different shadowing opportunities with physicians or other health professionals in diverse specialties, types of practice e. The more that you can shadow physicians with whom you have something in common, the more it may help you think about yourself in the role later. A couple of the goals behind shadowing are to see enough that you understand the rewards and challenges of day-to-day doctoring, and that you gain insight from folks who are doing the kinds of things you want to be doing.

Shadowing is a valuable way to gain exposure to how a doctor thinks and what their work looks like day to day. You spend time learning from watching a physician interact with patients. To complement the insights gained from shadowing, we recommend seeking experience where you have an active role and personal responsibility for being a part of the health care team, even if your role is as simple as making sure that beds are made and patients have water.

Additionally, shadowing is largely a passive experience and is mainly for your benefit. We encourage you to supplement your shadowing experience with something more hands-on that helps others. It may be that the physician you plan to shadow already has this in mind and will allow you to sit with patients or their families as they wait for the physician or assist administrative staff with tasks — pure shadowing is a good first step, but something where you are able to contribute to and not just benefit from the clinical experience is recommended.

After all, part of the reason you want to be a doctor is to help others — demonstrate that interest by finding ways that you can help! If you plan to practice in the United States, it would benefit you to have familiarity with the way that healthcare is organized and delivered in the US. You can gain some of this through GHP classes, reading on your own, following the news, etc.

If you have an interest in global health, try reaching out to physicians in the US who work in that sphere. I have very little volunteer experience but I shadow doctors a very lot and have a lot of clinical experience from a patient's perspective if this matters. I also have a lot of research experience.

Clinical experience doesn't have to be through volunteering, but having some sort of volunteer experience like community service would be good.

Also, clinical experience doesn't necessarily mean you have to be in a doctor's office or hospital which doesn't really matter since you have it already. Shadowing is a way of volunteering.

There is really no major difference. There aren't organizations that use shadowing as a way of improving the world unless its to make sure there aren't illegal practices going on and they are part of a watch dog organization I suppose.