Shadowing/Letter of Rec?

WayOutWestMom
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 15:48:53 +0000

No, for 2 reasons;

1. Allopathic med schools do not require (and often specifically say NOT to send) LORS from physicians whom you’ve shadowed. Physician LORs are typically uncritical fluff and not useful for evaluating applicants.

Osteopathic med schools do require a physician LOR, but those need to be from a DO.

2. any LOR you collect now (2019) will be “stale” by the time you apply in 2022. Med schools won’t accept LORs that are written more a year prior to application.

What you should do, though, is keep documentation of the number of hours you’ve shadowed. You will need to be able to list start & stop dates, total hours, the name of the physician and their contact info. (email, phone number. address)

Was the physician whom you shadowed in a primary care field? (FM, non-specialist IM, OB/GYN, peds, psych) Med schools strongly prefer applicants have exposure to a variety of primary care fields. if possible, you should shadow a variety of different practice modes too. (hospital, private office, public health clinic, etc.)

BTW, 64 hours w/ a single provider is overkill. Better to have a variety of shadowing experiences with different physicians in different specialties than all your shadowing with a single physician.