I worked in a huge academic hospital in LA for two years that was headed by a DO?? My grandfather also lives in Idaho and has personally had several DO doctors. This 'ohh there is huge discrimination' vs ' you can land an ACGME integrated plastics residency is you apply to DO friendly programs' **** seems to flux like mad on here. I seriously think it changes with people having bad days etc.
Heh indeed. Remember all the similar disagreements people like us encountered when we applied to medical school? "Research really matter
s" vs "
research doesn't matter at all". "A great MCAT score will help make up for a lousy GPA" vs "
no it won't". "You really need the committee letter" vs "
no you don't", etc etc. One of the biggest conclusions I drew from that experience was that most people who had gone through the application process seemed to use a very specific strategy and had very strongly held beliefs about which of their attributes allowed them to gain acceptance. After they were accepted, they then seemed to think that their strategies/attributes were the
only ones that were relevant when it came to getting into med school. This line of thinking was further complicated by the fact that medical schools seem to have wildly varying preferences in what they want to see in their candidates - thus allowing very different types of candidates to be successfully admitted. Then, because some of these very unique candidates were often able to spot other similar candidates that were successfully admitted, they used these candidates as "evidence" to "prove" that their perspectives were the
only ones that could be correct (aka confirmation bias!). For instance, how many times did we hear about somebody with no patient experience who somehow got admitted to medical school and then claimed that most other people he dealt with hadn't had any either?
I'd imagine the same thing happens with residency admission. For instance, while there are certainly some old-school ACGME residency directors who don't have any intention of ever admitting DOs, there also appear to be some younger ones that are open to the idea. There are obviously some DO candidates who are successful at getting into competitive ACGME residencies...and there are some that aren't. Some hospitals appear to discriminate against DOs, but others don't etc etc. It seems to be largely about the specifics of the situation rather than any major national "trends".
(On top of it all, you also can't be sure if some of the people who post on these boards are who they say they are, or if they're even deliberately trying to spread misinformation. I'm not accusing anybody specifically, but when I was reading these boards during the application process I quickly learned to double-check any information I encountered here against other sources because a
lot of things people said seemed to be rather off-base.)