How to Shadow a Doctor

Hey guys!

In order to accompany the recent bombardment of blog posts about my doctor shadowing experience, I have made a YouTube video giving you guys some tips of accomplishing this task yourselves. It's a very general video to help give you guys a basic understanding of what to do and what to expect. If you would like any specific questions answered feel free to leave them in the comments of this post or in the comments of my video which will be below. If you want to read about my experiences in a more detailed manner be sure to read the three posts I have written as well. And if you guys like to know more about my pre-med experience so far please let me know because I would love to tell you about the other things I've been doing to help me with my medical school applications.

OR Observation

Hey guys!

Long time no blog! Sorry. :/

As you guys may already know, I want to become a doctor. And as you have seen, I reposted my posts about my ER shadowing experience. Well last week (7/18/13) I completed my third doctor shadowing experience by following an anesthesiologist. While I know many will wonder why I didn't choose a surgeon to shadow, it's because I hoped to be exposed to many different types of surgeries rather than those limited to the type of surgeon I shadow.

My experience began with a rocky start because the OR was slow and the anesthesiologist I was supposed to shadow was allowed to take the day off. Luckily, two other anesthesiologists were kind enough to allow me to shadow them instead. After changing into scrubs, a cap, mask, and shoe covers, I felt like a real member of the medical care team. During the first case I was able to view down a patient's throat and see the cords before a breathing tube was put in place. Instead of staying and watching that procedure I was able to go and watch a CABG from start to finish. This is an open heart surgery and more commonly known as a heart bypass. Rather than taking a vein from the leg, the surgeon chose to use a mammary artery from the chest wall. Then because the patient had very small and delicate vessels, the surgeon chose to put the patient on the heart-lung machine. All in all, the entire procedure was very awesome and only took about two hours.

Before I had to leave, I was able to watch an epidural be administered for a patient having a procedure done on his prostate. While much less interesting than an open heart surgery, it was still interesting to see a first hand viewpoint of a very popular form of anesthesia, especially for pregnant women in labor. My conclusion about whether I would want one for if/when I have a baby is that the worst part isn't even when the medicine is administered, it's when the doctor numbs the area with a local anesthetic. Interesting enough, that medicine is used a lot for patients who need stitches.

The rest of my OR experience was a little less eventful. The number of surgeries and procedures was too low for there to be a need for three anesthesiologists and so another doctor was allowed to go home. This then put more pressure on the remaining doctor I was shadowing to complete all the tasks and prevented me from properly viewing more procedures. 

Nevertheless, I am very grateful to the doctors and OR department for allowing me to stick around even when my prior shadowing agreement fell through. I also realized just how much authority and responsibility a doctor has especially in a department like the OR that has a strict schedule and rules to follow. Anesthesiologists have to keep track of all nurse anesthetists making sure a patient remains under anesthesia during the procedure and that all surgeries start on time so that every other member of the operating team can move on with their jobs.

Let me know if there is more information you would like about shadowing doctors or just the pre-med experience in general.