When the young DOs get into leadership position and the current osteopathic leadership are in nursing homes rambling on about how they cured AIDS with OMM and making sure no fellow resident's sacral motion is out of wack. we might see a merger of MD's and DO. of course by then the PAs will have become doctors, the nurses will all have become doctors, chiropractors will have become [DEA licenced]doctors, and the DO schools will have pumped out so many DOs we might gain parity with MDs.
the problem is this, those that hold firm to the unique identity of osteopathy, and the power of omm end up in leadership positions. the majority forget omm and ignore the politics of the DO world. Once you are out of residency your degree makes almost no difference. patients may be confused but, many patients don't know that the PA, NP, sometime the RN are not doctors, after all they are all just people in scrubs.
the idea of and MDO or MD with masters in OMM or whatever, have been around for awhile. I think overwhelming majority of students wish for the change, I think the majority of DO wouldn't mind the change. but the ones that have the power to make the change like to be at the top of a small pyramid, and not at the middle of a large pyramid. and the fact that like was mentioned previously, many of the DO schools and residencies would get shut down under LCME/ACGME. read OGME and ACGME standards side by side to understand why.
Why don't you read AOA and ACGME rules! They are exactly the same and some AOA rules are actually more stringent than ACGME ones (I know that's
😱 on SDN).
Go look at General Surgery rules for example. They both require the same number of cases/lectures/time/etc. but AOA actually requires specific types of cases for residents. Now I'm NOT saying that AOA surgery is better than all ACGME programs (b/c they are not). But the minimum requirements are the same and there are many AOA programs (in all fields) that are better than some ACGME programs (e.g. community hospitals/FMG factories).
As I said before, if you don't like to be a DO, don't apply to DO schools.
It is ridiculous that people apply to a school knowing well the type of degree they will get and then complain about it. Nobody is forcing you to be a DO!
this is all true. The only DOs who enter the DO leadership are the ones who are nuts about OMM. The rest of us just want to be doctors, who might or might not use OMM to relieve pain now and then and certainly want nothing to do with the AOA, as they just make things worse politically, despite calling themselves the advocates for the DO degree.
If you look at the DO leadership, they are all the same: family docs who did AOA training all the way, often with a fellowship in OMM. Osteopathy is their life blood and the base of their practices, so they're going to advocate for it, not for merging/changing the degree.
And yes it's true that most DO schools would not meet LCME criteria. Most don't even have enough faculty to make the required faculty:student ratios.
First of all, regardless of what you think of AOA's individual policies, overall you have to admit that over the past 100 years they have done amazingly good things for the profession. There is not a single other organization which has been able to secure full unrestricted practice rights for its constituents in all 50 states and many countries around the world in competition with the "establishment" (i.e. MDs). They also do a fairly good job advocating for DOs (admittedly more for primary care than specialties). But if you are ever in trouble as a DO (e.g. licensing/discrimination) AOA is the only organization that will gladly stand up for you and defend your rights even in court if needed.
Your statement regarding LCME standards is just ridiculous. LCME and COCA standards are very similar (only minor differences). They have to be similar because if they differed greatly, LCME would've lobbied the government (and actually get somewhere) to shut DO schools down. The only school that would be in trouble is RVU (not academically, just based on tax status).
Also, The faculty:student ratio that LCME schools use is totally BS. They list any and all physicians who at any point in the history of the school had anything to do with teaching a medical student at their school. They list all of the physicians in their affiliated hospitals as their "faculty" even though a given faculty may have not even seen a medical student in decades. AOA schools can also list everyone who shows up for a lecture or two and all the physicians we work with through 3rd and 4th year as "faculty" and the ratio would be the same.
The problem is that on SDN, when you say LCME or ACGME, everyone thinks of Harvard and MGH. Yes Harvard and other Harvard-like schools (top 20-30) are better than any DO school. However, there are 100+ other LCME schools out there and they are not necessarily superior to all DO schools. Same philosophy applies to ACGME programs.
