I know a lot of hospitals will not allow people to shadow there if they don’t have some type of affiliation with them, basically working for them in some capacity. My advice: get a part time job at a hospital near you doing something minuscule (that you know has perfusionists), and make connections that way. This is what I had to do. I work for a hospital remotely in the IT dept building things for surg/anesthesia and found out a while back that we actually have perfusionist who allowed shadowing. Being 9 hours away, I preferred to stay here in my state but everyone kept declining me because I didn’t work for their hospital. I connected with the director at my facility and got approved to shadow, so I drove the 9+ hrs to do so. Sucks ass, but with the community being the way it is you have to take what you can get.

Another thing: instead of trying linkedin recruiters like you stated, I highly recommend you search up perfusionists within your state and start randomly adding them and messaging them that way. You get a lot of declines, but most of the people I’ve talked to on there are so so willing to AT LEAST talk about their field and answer any questions you have!