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</p>
<p>Xelb, check out his most recent thread here–something like, “3yrs undergrad, 2.7 gpa, what should I do?”–for some real gems.</p>
<p>What a jerk!</p>
<p>I wish to thank the thread starter for this thread. I have not posted in it since it has been started, mainly because I had no clue what the differences between a DO and an MD were, which led me to research the degrees. I have to say that unless something drastic changes, I will not be going into an MD program. If I get accepted into any DO program, that is where I will be going.</p>
<p>See the pdf endtitled “Results and Data: 2010 Main Residency Match” at [NRMP:</a> Data and Reports](<a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/index.html]NRMP:”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/index.html)</p>
<p>Figure 2 shows overall match rates for US seniors, DO’s, FMG’s and others.
Table 4 details match and withdrawal rates.
Table 11 details DO matches by specialty.
Table 14 gives head to head specialty match comparison of US seniors vs others.
(Pay attention to the definition of others and independent applicants on page 8.)</p>
<p>There are several take-home conclusions regarding DO’s that follow from this data.</p>
<p>First, DO’s do well in the match, but not as well as US seniors.
Second, DO’s match much better than FMG’s.
Third, DO’s can match to all specialties.
Fourth, DO’s match to a similar, but not identical, array of specialties to those of US seniors.
Fifth, US seniors generally match to higher positions of their rank lists than do “independent” applicants.</p>
<p>For match purposes (distinct from practice ability, car type driven and being a respected doc), there are several doors: US seniors use the front door; DO’s use another door on the building, perhaps on the front or side of the building; FMG’s use any open door but often are locked out; there is no back door (except the scamble).</p>
<p>Ok guys, lets get down to reality. I am personally considering to become a D.O. for a few reasons- </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Medicine is not how it used to be. Pharmaceutical companies heavily fund medical schools (allopathic) and MDs are trained to primarily focus on curing and treating symptoms and prescribing pills. Over 150,000 die each year from taking prescription drugs. we’re talking patients at hospitals, not kids overdosing on pills. </p></li>
<li><p>D.O.'s (osteopathic doctors) treat the patient as a whole - meaning they inspect not only the part of the body thats ill but also the mind and spirit. Preventative care is also critical. People want doctors they can trust and advise them (nutrition for instance), not doctors who are treating them as a basketball while the pharmaceutical company is the basket (get it- more patients and prescription, more money).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Don’t get me wrong - many MD’s become successful doctors who are very well respected and trusted from their patients. however, D.O.'s are highly more intended to treat the patient more precisely and efficiently.
- high school senior going to college soon</p>
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<p>The problem is that what you said doesn’t really reflect reality. The whole “treating patients as a whole” is more propaganda and wishful thinking than anything. The fact is, DO and MD’s basically don’t practice medicine differently. 95% of DO’s do not use OMM in their practice. The theme we’ve been trying to convey is that the difference b/w DO’s and MD’s is historical at this point.</p>
<p>Agree with $.02, but with a couple of prefaces to NRMP data. While DOs match at a 70% rate to ACGME fields, the other 30% will either scramble ACGME or fall back on a DO residency (hundreds go unfilled each year in primary care, so it’s really not an issue). When this is accounted for, the overall match rate is fairly similar for MD and DOin the mid 90s. </p>
<p>That said, DO students generally regard ACGME residencies to be superior (that is the perception, anyways), so in low to moderate competitive fields (IM, EM, Anesthesia), most will opt for the MD match. In competitive fields (ENT, Ortho, Derm, Rads, Surgical), the best DO students will opt for the DO match, which is a week earlier, since that is their best bet of getting into those fields. So when one sees NRMP data of 0-5 DOs matching into a field like ortho or ENT in a given year…it isn’t solely anti-DO bias keeping them out, but self-selection. </p>
<p>Overall, for a student applying to both, MD is the best for highly competitive fields, if for no other reason than they generally have proportionately greater number of positions than DO residencies in those fields. Another potential advantage is that you don’t have to explain your degree or equivalence to patients, since MD is what people assume is the only physician (this concept irks pre-meds, but in practice generally I hear it is rarely, if ever, an issue)</p>
<p>Here’s a comprehensive figure from SDN. Someone published a graph that accounts for DO student in the MD match, the DO match, combines both and shows how grads of allopathic and osteopathic schools end up in overall composition. </p>
<p>[Student</a> Doctor Network Forums - View Single Post - MD vs DO vs Caribbean. Hard Facts and Statistics](<a href=“MD vs DO vs Caribbean. Hard Facts and Statistics | Student Doctor Network”>MD vs DO vs Caribbean. Hard Facts and Statistics | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>EDit: also to the person claiming DOs treat the person as a whole over MDs, that is nonsense and any DO student will disagree with that. There is no difference in clinical practice whatsoever, and 90+% of DO grads disregard OMM. How you practice is dependent on your residency, specialty and personality, not your degree.</p>
<p>so forget about D.O. for a sec, how about a MD who practices and trains in alternative health, do you think thats treating the patient as a whole - nutriton considered. Can this be the future of medicine? Instead of the consant prescribing of pills. what do you guys think?</p>
<p>Q: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
A: Medicine.</p>
<p>So no.</p>
<p>I don’t know of any doctor who only prescribes pills. While I do have a lot of criticism for the health care system, it’s a little silly to imply that medical practice that considers “nutrition” is some kind of alternative system or somehow only a theoretical future. Nutrition is an important part of medical health and training, now and in the future.</p>
<p>if by “alternative” you mean something like homoeopathy, then no, that’s never going to be something that you can specialize in at a US med school.</p>
<p>WandM,
Do you know as a fact that “Nutrition is an important part of medical training, now”.
I do not knw any facts about medical training, but I heard otherwise, that Nutrition is NOT part of medical training. I might be incorrect. I have very positive experiences with alternative doctors. They consider Nutrition.</p>
<p>Nutrition really isn’t a huge part of the medical school curriculum mainly because nutrition counseling pays very poorly. A typical primary care visit is only 15 minutes. You can’t just tell the patient to “eat healthy.” Good nutrition counseling entails a knowledge of nutrition (which most of us don’t have), eliciting the patient’s diet preferences, and designing a diet that is balanced and somewhat palatable to the patient. No one is going to spend 15 minutes doing that, billing for $20, only for a 10% chance the patient will even be adherent to that diet. Instead, you make a referral to a dietician.</p>
<p>Better nutrition, exercise, avoidance of risky behaviors and smoking cessation are becoming important foci of medical interventions because of the rise of accountable care organizations, health care delivery systems that tie physician reimbursement to reduction in total cost of care of a group of patients.</p>
<p>While nutrition counseling is not a big part of current medical school curricula, it is becoming a big part of “private practice” (what used to be private practice) medicine.</p>
<p>Seeing as how most of the MDs I know are pretentious pricks, I can understand why DOs are looked down upon. I wouldn’t be that surprised if MDs even spread this misconception on to their patients.</p>
<p>Seeing how most MDs I know are people who live moderately and are wonderfully kind people, I can’t fathom why DOs are looked upon.</p>
<p>The first part of that sentence is 100% true. See what generalizing about 800,000 odd-people does?</p>
<p>If I had to choose between a MD physician (US MD, not Caribbean) and a DO physician to treat me or my family, I will almost always go with the MD physician. Why would I say something like that? They’re both licensed physicians, right? </p>
<p>It is rare to hear of someone who chose a DO institution over an MD institution (though not completely unheard-of.) However, it is VERY common to hear of someone who did not meet the credentials of MD institutions and, with few options left, decided to pursue a career in Osteopathic Medicine. The people whom I am referring to do not enter DO school because they are interested in the “holistic aspect of medicine” or whatnot; they do it due to a lack of options, which was, in most cases, caused by a lack of acceptable performance while attending their respective undergraduate institution.</p>
<p>Usually, pre-med students who lack the ambitiousness or the intellectual capacity to achieve the marks needed to be considered at Allopathic institutions are the ones who attend DO schools. </p>
<p>I agree that some DO physicians are better than some MD physicians. I know a felon who is a great chef… He exceeds the culinary talent of most restaurant chefs, yet, due to his criminal record, no restaurant would hire him, and the customers would not want him in the kitchen, either. In the same way, DO physicians must bear the burden of their own under-performance during their undergraduate careers (or, for the very few exceptions, those of their counterparts) and accept the stereotypes that loom over their DO degrees.</p>
<p>yikes…that last post was embarassing. </p>
<p>Obviously someone should take a US MD acceptance over a US DO (unless they love OMM greatly or something), simply because it will help in the long run with name recognition, academic medicine (if relevant), and some of the more competitive fields. But that post has got to be among some of the most condescending stuff I’ve seen on here.</p>
<p>Yes, DOs on average have a few points lower on the MCAT or tenths of a point on GPA, but I would hardly equate that with lack of “intellectual capacity” or “ambition” that MDs have. Moreover, your statement about “felon chefs”, um, I don’t even know where to begin. DOs who enter MD residencies are ultimately taking the same boards and training alongside their MD colleagues. If you have 10 DOs and 10 MDs in the same allopathic residency, how good they ultimately turn out has far more to do with the individual and how hard they work, not with which degree they had or who earned a higher GPA in undergrad.</p>
<p>Using your string of logic, did the MD Family Physician not have the intellectual capacity to become a dermatologist, and must he accept to himself that he wasn’t smart enough for you? In your mind, he probably lacked ambition or intellectual rigor to cut it in the other fields. When we need a routine physical, should we only see the physician trained at MGH because the state-school grad couldn’t actually cut it at a better residency? Should the Howard trained physician need to accept your stereotype that he really didn’t have the intellectual strength or rigor to succeed in a better MD school because his school has significantly lower MCAT averages? </p>
<p>Seriously dude…look back at your post in another 10 years (if you make into med school), and you’ll honestly laugh at how asinine it was, and how much your mentality has (hopefully) changed…</p>
<p>The difference is that your statement is woefully untrue and my statement, though an exaggeration, is much closer to the truth.</p>
<p>IMHO, MD = True Greatness</p>
<p>wow. I realize I’m bumping an old thread but I am struck by the condescension towards D.O.s. I have known a couple of whip-smart people who went D.O. because they were either a non-trad and didn’t have time to dance the full pre-med BS extracurricular dance, or in the other case had a slip up in undergrad during a quarter when her father was diagnosed with cancer. One bad orgo grade sealed her fate unfortunately, but she landed a very coveted pediatrics residency after killing the boards. Med school admissions are too fickle to make generalizations about the quality of all D.O.s… I think where the person completed their residency is more important.</p>
<p>So I randomly looked on this forum during winter break, and I saw my old post. Based on my experience in college, the medical school application process, and being accepted into both the allopathic and osteopathic medical school in my state, the stigma towards osteopathic schools is not deserved. </p>
<p>In short, if you go to an osteopathic school, then you will run into some bias in your career. It will be from either a stuck up snob or a patient/family member who has little to no knowledge about the medical field. Aside from those possibilities, you should not experience any trouble. Osteopathic medical schools are not some backdoor option used to become a doctor.</p>