I am halfway through my shadowing program and so far I have enjoyed everything I have experienced. I am very comfortable around my supervisor and all the staff members because they treat me nicely and help me learn new things everyday.
In the past few weeks I have seen many patients interacting with Dr. Sher. Every time Dr. Sher sees a patient he would explain to me the history and the anatomy of the disease. This way I learn different medical terms everyday. On some days I would also watch Dr. Sher perform colonoscopy with his team. He would point out the different parts of the colon to me and sometimes he would ask me questions to make sure that I am learning well.
So far I have realized that the medical field is different from university life in that there are more hands on experience opportunity. For instance, as a pre-med student in university, most of the time we are taking science classes like Bio, Chem etc and other times we are in the lab conducting research and experiments. On the other hand, in the medical field we get to help perform more practical things like using the colonoscopy machine and other medical devices. Moreover, instead of just learning and reading about different diseases, in medical field, we actually get to see it with our own eyes.
Lastly, I would say that my brain has absorbed a lot of knowledge in the past few weeks. Some skills I am building as a result of this shadowing program is interacting with different people, working as a team and learning new information everyday about medical terms. I believe I can make use of these skills in college and when going to medical school.