Summer shadowing/observership after 1st year

[pinkaholic]

I'm planning to use my summer after 1st year to do some shadowing. I was wondering what's a good amount of time to spend in each specialty? At first I was thinking that I would spend 1 week in each specialty that I'm interested in, but now I'm wondering if certain specialties deserve more/less time. The ones I'm thinking about are gen surg, gastroenterology, urology, obs/gyn, and radiology.

 

Any insight would be appreciated!

[ploughboy]

I'm planning to use my summer after 1st year to do some shadowing. I was wondering what's a good amount of time to spend in each specialty? At first I was thinking that I would spend 1 week in each specialty that I'm interested in, but now I'm wondering if certain specialties deserve more/less time. The ones I'm thinking about are gen surg, gastroenterology, urology, obs/gyn, and radiology.

 

Any insight would be appreciated!

 

I'd opt for fewer specialties and no more than a month total in your first-year/second-year summer. At this point in your training, all you really need to have a sense of is "medical specialty or surgical specialty". Even then, you don't need to make that decision right now. Some people don't decide until 4th year.

 

Do two weeks of general surgery and two weeks of rads (if you're seriously considering that specialty) and spend the rest of your summer enjoying life. Once you're a clerk/resident/fellow you will not have the same large amounts of free time that you have as a med student, so make sure you do something fun and non-medical during your summer.

 

Doing a couple of weeks of gen surg will give you a sense of whether or not you like to cut, which makes a urology observership redundant. If you're still curious about the GU tract, do uro later like in clerkship.

 

GI - the general surgeons deal with the same region of the body, but from a surgical rather than a medical perspective. If you really like the colon but don't like to cut, do some GI rotations later.

 

Obs - again it's a cut/no-cut distinction, along with the added bonus (?) of delivering babies. Nobody is going to let an M1 deliver her baby, so you'll get to watch a lot but likely not do much. Bottom line - save it for clerkship. Unless you're a super-focused obs keener, all that an obs observership will do for you is familiarize you with the smell of placenta.

 

Radiology - in its own world, so do a couple of weeks and see how you like it. You'll spend a lot of time watching and little-to-no time doing. I did a month of radiology after first year, mostly so that I could be in Germany during the World Cup and I needed to be doing something that didn't require fluency in German, and far less because I was a radiology keener. It was interesting, but other than watching as the residents and consultants scrolled through images I didn't do much. A Canadian observership will probably be similar.

 

Good luck!

[Lactic Folly]

Quality over quantity. The goal of shadowing for most 1st year students is to gain a sense of what's out there and figure out which areas to pursue in greater depth. As such, you don't need to commit a lot of time upfront to each area. It's more important that you are getting to see a range of activities within each field and be able to spend time with people who are willing to talk with you about their career choices.

 

As most shadowing/observerships (versus electives) should be pretty flexible, I would book a short amount of time in each area to start with, and go from there. If you're receiving a balanced, well-rounded exposure, it may not take very long to realize that an area is missing or involves a certain critical element and is not for you. If your area has promise, you now have a better footing to arrange further elective experiences. Perhaps you can delve into a different subspecialty, or you may have received a rec/referral for a popular preceptor.

 

Sometimes one's impressions of a field can be significantly influenced by the personalities and working atmosphere at a particular site, at a particular time, so it can also be advantageous to rotate at different locations - perhaps finding a place where people are less busy and have more opportunities to involve you.