Find Your Trail Guide, part 4 of the "How to Get Your Foot In The Door" series

keywords:  hospital practice, prospective hospital-practice integrative health practitioners, students of East Asian Medicine (acupuncture), integrative health students, shadowing health care practitioners, preparing for hospital practice, shadowing in hospital practice setting, finding a mentor

www.thehospitalhandbook.com

This is the fourth in the blogpost series answering the question:

"How do I get my foot in the door of hospital practice?"

Stay tuned as posts will be published over the next 3-4 weeks.
If you are interested in following this work, please subscribe to this blog, the public Facebook page, and subscribe to the email newsletter.

Quick overview

• First, make sure you have the basic requirements covered
• Then, preparation.  
• You must enrich your foundation, pack a trail bag, and find your trail guides.
• Your first expeditions are to develop the basic stepping stones into successful hospital practice, shadowing and volunteering.  
• These stepping stones are used throughout your hospital practice career to learn and grow.  So, become familiar with these stones and do not neglect how much easier they make crossing streams or rivers vs. wading in without a trail guide or path to follow.

Find Your Trail Guide

Acronyms
EAM = East Asian Medicine.  Broad term that includes Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and related disciplines.
EAMP, and L.Ac. = terms for a practitioner who has completed an ACAOM-accredited master's or doctorate program and has a current state license.  EAMP = East Asian Medicine Practitioner.  L.Ac. = Licensed Acupuncturist.  L.Ac. is the most common state license title in the U.S.
MD = medical doctor, physician

www.thehospitalhandbook.com

Here we go!  You have your basic requirements for practice.  Now, you must enrich your foundations through experience and human connection.  

To be successful in any new expedition in life, you need a trail guide, a mentor.

East Asian Medicine (EAM) has a long history of honoring mentorship throughout one’s career.  Who are your current mentors?  

To your mentor team, now add a hospital-practice mentor. 

www.thehospitalhandbook.com

To find someone in your field (EAM) who is in hospital practice, connect to the online forums, take courses from them, or find a way to shadow them.

Mentorships during employment are discussed more in the "performance evaluation" subchapter of the book. 

Shadow Your Trail Guide (Mentor)

www.thehospitalhandbook.com

If you don’t already have an EAMP hospital practice mentor, consider shadowing one.  Ask politely and remember that not all programs are open to prospective practitioner shadowing.  Teaching hospitals tend to be more open to this.  Every situation is different.  There are a lot of rules about shadowing any type of practitioner in hospital practice whether they are an MD or an L.Ac. 

One summer, while I was a pre-med student at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, I shadowed a wonderful family practitioner at an outpatient clinic.  She invited me back to shadow her every week.  So, every week, on, maybe, Tuesday, I shadowed her for a couple morning hours between classes.  As a shadow, when you are watching the practitioner with the patient, the provider introduces you, you say a quick hello, and then you are silently observing the interaction and doing your best to stay out of the way.  Unless, of course, the provider asks you to do something (like catch the LPN for something). 

So, in clinical practice, who are your current trail guides (mentors)?

Which one is your hospital practice trail guide? 

Make a list of 5 health care providers you know who work in hospital practice.

www.thehospitalhandbook.com

What is their discipline?  (physician, EAMP/L.Ac., psychologist, physical therapist, etc.)

What is their specialty?  (pediatrics, obstetrics, brain injury, rehabilitation, etc)

Of these providers, which would you be interested in shadowing?  Politely ask each of them, explaining your reason for doing so (as a health care practitioner you are interested in how their clinic day goes).  When one of them says yes, set up a date and time and ask what the local facility protocol (paperwork, name badge, etc) is for shadowing.

Don't know anyone in hospital practice?

www.thehospitalhandbook.com

That's okay.  

• Start with volunteering in a local hospital or medical center.  The specific blogpost covering this will publish in just a few weeks.  Send me a message via the website if you would like an advance copy.
• While you are setting up your non-clinical part-time volunteer work, connect to the EAM hospital practice community in the following ways:  
• sign up for the email newsletter
• check out the website
• subscribe to this blog and 
• like/follow our public Facebook page.

Stay tuned for the next post, "What to Expect on Your Shadow Day"

copyright Megan Kingsley Gale.  all rights reserved.

Do not reproduce without author's written permission

Review the previous posts in this series
Basic education and licensing requirements before applying for hospital-practice work.
Benefits of shadowing healthcare practitioners
Pack Your Trail Bag--tools you need for the journey and how to develop stepping stones


Today's resource recommendations

• Review the previous posts in this series:  post 1, post 2, post 3
• Sign up for the Hospital-practice Handbook Project email newsletter
• Follow/like the Hospital-practice Handbook Project public Facebook page
• Contact your alumni office to find hospital-practice providers in your field
• Pre-order the pdf of this entire series

Was this blogpost useful or interesting to you?
 You can buy me a coffee while I blog at a coffee shop ($3-$5) or 
support operating costs for a day $20.

If you want to support one of the Projects, like the Webinar Series, or sponsor a newsletter, contact me via the website. 

Thank you!

Do you want to follow our work at the Hospital Handbook Project?  Just sign up for the newsletter on the website, subscribe to the blog, and like our Facebook page.