East coast Colleges with excellent pre-med advising and support?

Shadowing is usually the last item to be done. It takes time to develop relationships and trust with physicians who will then allow a student in observe the day-to-day into their medical practice. Most shadowing starts with the student’s own personal physician(s), then moves out to the their clinical exposure sites where, after they have been a good and responsible volunteer/employee for 6 months or more, the staff will feel comfortable with inviting into their practice.

BTW, shadowing is brief, often 1-2 days at most. Pre meds are expected to have shadowed in variety of specialties, especially in primary care since most med students will end up in primary care specialties.

Volunteering at hospitals in college Is often completely different than high school hospital volunteering because of the age difference. HIPAA and insurance liability are the main divers of this. It’s fairly rare for high school students to have direct patient contact positions.

Also many patient contact positions require specialized training which is why obtaining a certification (EMT, CNA, MA, scribe, etc) is highly recommended for pre-meds. Because healthcare work involves working with a very vulnerable population, it’s highly regulated. Anyone touching a patient in any way must be operating within their scope of practice.

I also suggest that you keep in mind that a student can get clinical exposure at home during summer breaks.

And please understand that 85% of premeds will take 1-3 gap years AFTER undergrad to work in full time clinical positions in order to demonstrate and reinforce their desire to work in healthcare. Only a minority of pre-meds go straight through from undergrad directly to med school. (And of that 15% who do, about 1/3 of them come from BA/MD programs.)

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