MED Shadowing Reflections: UCSF

Kevin Huang

Shadowing a physician can be a wonderful opportunity for students, especially for us, who are interested in a career in medicine, coming from Asia. Through the Med exchange program, we may attend visits alongside the physician at Parnassus campus of UCSF Medical Center.

This shadowing experience can give us great insight into what a physician’s typical day may be like. Although I have volunteer experiences at UCLA Medical Center and shadowed psychiatry in free clinic at East L.A., this one-day long shadowing provided me with invaluable clinical exposure to patient care since now I possess more medical knowledge as a second-year medical student at KMU.

Today, the attending physician of our general internal medicine team is Dr. Fang and our team is composed of other two resident doctors and two UCSF medical students. During patient visits, I am able to stand bedside and observe how doctors and patients communicate. Though I have not entered the clerkship in Taiwan yet, the good doctor-patient relationship amazes me. Every resident doctor will have her own patient and the whole team works cooperatively with etiquette-based communication to reassure her patients’ concerns and ensure that the patient does not leave with any unanswered questions.

First of all, the doctor will introduce herself and all the accompanying team members to the patient and create a welcoming environment by holding the patient’s hand warm and tight. The interaction between hospitals staff is interesting that it seems there is no hierarchy in the hospital. Each inpatient’s visit will be around 20 to 30 minutes. The healthcare professionals here are knowledgeable and friendly with excellent bedside manners.

This shadowing experience certainly strengthens my passion to become a great doctor who can always understand the patient’s feeling and provide patient-centered care.


Min-Jui Lawrence Sun

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I went to UCSF for shadowing today. I spent about two and half hours for a round to patients’ rooms with a medical group including 2R, 2 interns, and 2 pharmacy students. After the round, I attended the lunch meeting of the doctors in UCSF.

I’m a second grade student in Taiwan. As a result, I haven’t learned much medical knowledge yet. During the shadowing round, I found it extremely difficult and challenging to understand what’s going on. The medical terms tortured me a lot. However, I could take a look at the environment, system and relationship between doctors and patients in America. This experience will be very important to me because I want to take the USMLE test and come to America in the future. Understanding something about the hospital will help me plan for my future.

The relationship between doctors and patients was quite impressive. Most of them were just like friends. The doctors were patient and kind, and the patients usually listened and obeyed to the doctors’ opinions. This made the communication efficient so that it won’t take too much time and there were seldom quarrels between doctors and patients. In the whole round, the group took care of 12 patients. There were only 2 patients had really opposite thoughts with the doctors. One of whom decided to believe the doctors while the other had a severe quarrel about the treatment she used.

The meeting in the lunch time was inspiring. Some doctors shared their thoughts about DNR/DNI, and there were some patients’ case report, which were just like what I learned in clinical English class these days.

To sum up, this shadowing experience will be an important and inspiring memory to me. I believe this experience can have some help on my future.


Heng-Yu Haley Lin

I remember that it was one of the extremely busy night when I was preparing for Yang Ming Med Camp, I received the email which contained all the information about shadowing. I was too tired to read those tiny English vocabularies through, so I just chose it at will, and was coincidentally assigned to the internal medicine department of UCSF. The reason why it was such an amazing coincidence is that before coming to VIA, I just finished my pre-clerkship at the general medicine department of our teaching hospital (which is of course located in Taiwan). Therefore, I’m able to compare the internal medicine system between the US and my home country.

Although there are so many similarities (since Taiwanese government always tends to mimic almost every systems of America), this shadowing experience is undoubtedly a huge cultural shock for me. For example, in Taiwan, due to some historical reasons (such as the influence of Japanese colonization), the status of doctors and patients is never equal─actually, doctors always receive much more respect than patients. But today, when I followed the medical team stepped into the first ward, I was so shocked to see the attending doctor and chief resident crouching down at the bedside, talking to the patient(which was diagnosed with mediastinum canter and thus very depressed) like very close friends. I also surprisingly observed the family members of the patients in the US are so active (sometimes can be aggressive) and well-prepared. Most of them seemed to have already done so much “research” and thus understand almost all the professional medical terms, which is very overwhelming for me. Suddenly, I felt that patients and their families in Taiwan are truly friendly and easygoing.(lol)

Thanks to this lovely coincidence(and my parents’ $600), I not only amaze about the high class equipments, but also learn a lot from those super smart UCSF doctors and other professionals. Since I haven’t handed in my feedback to the pre-clerk program, I hope my observation during this unforgettable shadowing experience can help improve myself as well as the medical system in Taiwan(at least in Taipei Veteran Hospital)!

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