<p>I've been reading around a bit and I heard that if you go to a D.O school its possible to do a M.D residency. So does doing a M.D residency make you an M.D or would you be a D.O since you went to a D.O school</p>
<p>You’d still be a D.O.</p>
<p>D.O. and M.D. are simply two different kinds of medical degree, and the differences between them are no longer as great as they were a generation or two ago. People who graduate from a college of osteopathic medicine may indeed do residency training in the same fields as graduates of allopathic medical schools. In other words, whether you earn a D.O. or an M.D., you can still do a residency in internal medicine or pediatrics or psychiatry or whatever. Either way, you’re still a physician, and you can still become licensed to practice medicine in any state. But the residency training doesn’t affect the degree you have from your medical school. If you go to a college of osteopathic medicine that awards a D.O., then you’re a doctor of osteopathy. You’d just be a D.O. who’s also a gynecologist, or whatever.</p>
<p>That having been said, I should note that there are some areas of the country where osteopathic medicine has kind of a toe hold, and D.O.'s are fairly common, but there are other areas of the country where osteopathic medicine is pretty uncommon and D.O.'s (probably unfairly) have kind of a Rodney Dangerfield problem: they don’t get no respect at all. This same problem may also make it harder for new doctors of osteopathy to match into residencies in very famous hospitals (e.g., Johns Hopkins or Mass General) or highly competitive specialties (e.g., ophthalmology or otolaryngology). But in principle, a D.O. can do pretty much anything that an M.D. can do. And if you want to be a “regular doctor,” who takes care of sick people, you can do that with either degree.</p>