 Alright guys, what is going on, Alex here from the MD journey, helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. This video, I'm going to be showing you and helping you get more shadowing opportunities, show you how to look, what tips I have. And I know if you're a pre-med, that's something you always want to know. So let's get to those tips after the intro. Alright guys, so how do you get more shadowing opportunities? I'm going to break this up in a couple of steps. The first one is, how many shadowing opportunities do you need, or do you even need any for your medical school application? The answer to that is obviously yes. You have to prove on your medical application that you have the experience that enough in the clinical setting that you want to become a physician even after seeing it. You've shadowed a doctor, you've shadowed a surgeon, a pediatrician, whatever it may be, but you're showing on your application that I've seen this before. I may not have done much, I may have just been a fly on the wall, but at least after looking through those experiences I've decided that I want to do it. So the first thing is yes, absolutely you need it. So if you're struggling or if that's a part of your application that you're missing out on, follow the rest of the tips in this video and we'll help you structure it better. Moving on to the second part of that tip is how many do you need? I would recommend aim for one a month. That seems like a big task for some of you, especially if you've had difficulty getting shadowing experience in the past. I understand it's not easy, especially when there's a lot. If you're in the United States for example, a lot of laws which make it easier for physicians to say no because they just don't want to deal with the paperwork and administrative crap that they have to do to get you to come see them. But I would still recommend trying to get one a month, which means you have the opportunity to get a lot of nose and just have somebody say yes I'm okay with you shadowing me multiple times or several people saying yes I'm okay with you coming during this month. So moving on to tip number two on how I would suggest you go about getting your shadowing experience is come up with a list of physicians in your area or clinics that you know about. This will probably take a weekend for you to do a quick hour to two hour Google search and come up with a excel sheet of I would say anywhere from 25 to 50 physicians and clinics. That seems like a lot but be prepared to have a lot of rejections, a lot of no answers and then a few maybe that are willing to communicate with you so you want to be able to increase the wider your net. That way you can get as many opportunities as possible. So come up with the list. So look up any clinics nearby. Look up hospitals that have like the physician's emails. Look up the the physicians on LinkedIn if possible. Just be resourceful. So if you know a family friend definitely ask them or add them to your list and create this excel sheet, this master excel sheet with their name, the contact info, phone number whatever you may be and whether or not you've already contacted them. So moving on to tip three which is create a template of what you want to send them via email because you're going to be emailing a bunch of them I'm assuming. So in your template you want to break it down into a very structured format which is your first sentence is introduce yourself. Say I am so-and-so I am this far in my journey so you can say if you're a college student where you are what you're majoring in put that under one sentence and at the very end of that sentence put I'm interested in going to some medical school and I'm looking for more experience and exposure. Sentence one. Number two is saying something along that you would love to have the opportunity to shadow or follow them even for a day or multiple events if they're willing. So that's sentence two. And sentence three is just saying something about your schedule which is my schedule is pretty flexible. Please let me know whatever time works for you. You can always like mess around if your schedule isn't flexible. Later but let's just get them to respond to try not to get not try not to create many barriers to your success. So first sentence introduce yourself. Second sentence mention that you love to shadow them. Third sentence mention that your flexibility is super open. And four mention and the fourth sentence is that if they're not willing this is really important because you can get a lot of references this way is if they're not able to or willing to let you shadow them ask them if they have a good contact of who they'd recommend you contact next. And that has helped me kind of reach out to people that eventually have shadowed because the physicians know themselves maybe I'm not a good person for somebody to come shadow my clinic is really busy my patients may not be comfortable with a college student but I do know of this position in my own practice that brings the students a lot. So here is his email. So first sentence introduce yourself. Second sentence mention that you're interested in shadowing them if they're allowed if they're willing to allow you to do so. Third sentence mention that you're flexible and fourth sentence ask them if they're not able to who they would recommend. And then the fifth sentence is just add that they can contact you via email and your cell phone. Add your cell phone in there and I can text you anytime and then just say thank you. And that's pretty much it. Like create that template. You can be a little more specific if you want if you especially if you want exposure within a field like if you really want to become a surgeon or you think you have an interest in surgery the ones that are surgeons you can add a little blurb about your your interest in surgery. But otherwise if you use that template and see who responds and send that out. So my title I usually just put to whom and make concern but you can just write one email to each position. That may be a little bit nicer too because then you'll have one email per person so you'll be able to keep better track of your communications. And then your subject line just put a inquiring about shadowing opportunities and just put just leave it there. That's kind of what's worked for me. So going back to reflecting on what I've already mentioned is try to get at least one of these create a list of 25 to 50 sending emails out and then wait about a week or two. And if you don't hear anything I would email them back and say hey I'm just reaching out again I sent this email. Please let me know if we're still able to set something up. They may still not respond or they may respond okay actually we're not available so then you can take off your Excel sheet. Once ideally by this time you are getting responses back and you can start adding people to your calendar you can do whatever paperwork that they require you to do. And then you want to fill the list up again and look for what physicians you know mark the physicians that said no or the clinics that said no in your Excel sheet with red so you don't contact them again and look for more. You can continue to ask the people like after your shadowing hey I'm you know thank you so much for letting me shadow you but who else would you recommend I also reach out to because I'm trying to get a lot of exposure on my belt. Physicians know this we all have to do this to get into medical school. So so it's totally okay to be resourceful and try to network but keep adding to your list every time your your shadowing appointments are just starting to dwindle. So that's my approach guys it's not very complicated but it does require a good amount of crowd work and being okay with you know people rejecting you or people not responding to it's part of medicine people are busy and so if you really want it you just have to go out there and communicate as many people as possible and you'll get a couple of diamonds in the rough that will say okay and you're going to have great experiences. I'll make a different video in the future about what you should do when you go out to your shadowing appointments and what you need to keep in mind. I do mention that my course which I'll link down below as well. That's my approach on how you get shadowing appointments and it's it's pretty basic. I mean I admit that but very few students are willing to do the work you know upfront to get the results in the back. I think I had about 120 hours of shadowing appointments and experiences by the time that I applied in that school that spoke volume. So are you able to put in the work ask yourself and if you haven't had it on your application and make sure you do the work now so that way your application is a little bit more competitive once you try to do it. So hopefully that was helpful if it was comment below. Let me know if you guys have more questions on shadowing or any other topic you love for me to talk about the medical school application process. Obviously if you enjoyed this video like the video subscribe to the channel and I'm going to stop babbling. I will see you as the next one. Take care my friends.