Clinical med student making my schedule for next year, interested in surg subspecialty and with all of the "required" surg subspecialty stuff (research, sub-I, aways, etc.) I have almost no time for electives in other specialties. I'm not super interested in rads right now, but it is almost certainly my what I'm interested in 2nd most. Would shadowing give me the same/similar experience or idea as I would get on an elective? Or should I try to rearrange my schedule in a way that lets me take an elective to be certain?
When you say you are a clinical med student, I guess I'm assuming you are making the transition from M2 to M3. The reason for this assumption is that radiology is so integral to taking care of patients in hospitals these days that the entire M3 year is a way to "understand" what radiologists do to test that experience--because you'll essentially be relying on their interpretations to manage your patients. Your question comes off a little like you haven't yet done that M3 year.
You'll have plenty of opportunity to "get exposed" to radiology in the M3 year if you keep a mental awareness how you and your teams are using radiology and interacting with radiologists when you are on other services. For all the lip service that some subspecialists give to how they "interpret their own images", for anything beyond focused stuff (like "does my patient have a fracture where they hurt?") or simple stuff (like "is the endotracheal tube/feeding tube/orthopedic hardware/venous catheter in the right place"), you will gain some understanding of the role of radiologists through your clinical year by seeing how they impact care. By showing some interest even when you aren't on a radiology elective, you could probably engage with radiology residents/fellows/some attendings to better understand what they do.
But admittedly that won't give you a clear understanding of the joys and frustrations of being a radiologist. To some degree, picking any specialty is a leap of faith based on some introspection about what you like and don't like in medicine. Shadowing for a couple of days, albeit boring as watching grass grow, is fine to get a sense of a radiologist's day, recognizing that you'll still need to make that leap of faith. A month elective layers on a component of "learning" which makes the observation more interesting but will come with a set of learning goals/objectives which will occupy your attention away from the specific question regarding "do I want to do this?"
More comments not directly pertinent to your question below:
Outside of academic activities and administrative activities, what physicians do is repetitive around a "fundamental activity":
1. Most radiologists' fundamental activity: Review patient images with variable amounts of access to history to make conclusions about the probability of specific diseases, do a procedure if that has been requested and is indicated, and communicate impressions or procedural findings in a written report that may articulate suggestions on what to do next. Each interaction is worth between 0.2 to 2.0 RVU (that's just a wild guess of the interquartile range, or IQR)--repeat this over and over to get to about 8800 RVUs/year for the median radiologist.
2. Non-radiologists' fundamental activity: Review/do patient history/physical to make conclusions about the probability of specific diseases, do or schedule the patient for a procedure if that is indicated, and communicate impressions or procedural findings in a written report that may outline next steps. Each interaction is worth between 0.25 to 4.0 RVU (that's just a wild guess of the interquartile range, or IQR)--repeat this over and over to get to about 4000 to 10,000 RVUs/year (depending on the specialty).
Outside any actual procedure, the interquartile range for non-radiologists is probably 5-20 minutes for each "interaction". Outside any actual procedure, the interquartile range for radiologists is probably 1-10 minutes for each "interaction".
Decide which fundamental activity you want to do over and over and over.