My intention has to do with my experience. I remember very well how heinous was my experience applying to medical school. Specifically, I struggled a great deal to understand what this whole allopathic/osteopathic medicine thing was about. I'd never heard of the terms osteopathic and allopathic before applying.
In discussions on SDN, I saw a lot of conflicting information. People would say "DO's are second rate" Others response with "No they're not." People would say "DO's are all primary care docs." Others would say "No they're not." People would say "DO's get discriminated against by residency programs." Other would say "No, they don't." It was very confusing and disconcerting.
Now that I'm a third year medical student at a DO school, I haven't forgotten that experience, and I enjoy trying to do my little part to provide some reliable information to pre-meds out there. I try to be as non-biased as I can be. You want criticisms of osteopathic med - I'll be the first to provide you with some. You want criticism of the allopathic establishment - I can tell you what those are too.
I see so much misinformation here on SDN, people keep repeating the same misleading myths. So, I hope I can be one voice that counters that a little bit, but not with propaganda, with whatever real research there is. The following is are some good examples, and very well-articulated. I don't think beegeforty4 is trying to mislead anyone, I just think he might not have up-to-date info, probably because its very hard to find amidst all the questionable half-truths out there:
Indeed, this has radically changed. And not according to me, according to the numbers of DOs that go into primary care fields. The second statement is really problematic. A curriculum that "circles around primary care" and "push physicians in that direction" ??? This is just not the case. The curriculum of DO schools is exactly the same as MD school. We go through a systems-based approach - anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, in more or less the exact same fashion as MD schools. Yeah, there are variations on this theme, as there are between MD-schools. But that's more or less med school in US at this point. There's no pushing anyone into any field.
This also is a bit problematic. As I've said before, the emphasis on "holistic medicine" is more of a slogan of osteopathic medicine than some major difference. (
link) In fact, some people have actually done a survey on this and found that MD med school professors had no issue with the supposedly "holistic" osteopathic tenets, they just think of them as "medicine" not necessarily "osteopathic" or "holistic" medicine.(
link) The difference is subtle - one of emphasis and philosophy or style, not actual practice.(
link)
Also, as far as board scores do, osteopathic students often take USMLE as an afterthought, since they are more focused on passing their required board exam, the COMLEX.(
link p.80)
This one is easy, as someone has already done the work for me. Harvard med school faculty reviewed website on OMM. (
link)
However, I think its worth pointing out that as an NYU school of medicine makes clear, it is difficult to do research on this stuff in the same way as say, a drug. (
link)
Allow me to elaborate on this last point. Manual therapy is hard to test. A good example is something like physical therapy. Patients with injuries often get prescribed physical therapy. There's a lot of research showing that PT is helpful. But its very difficult to assess what the most helpful practices are. Every PT is going to perform a technique differently, and every injury is different. It's not like something you can easily quantify, like hypertension. We can do a large study and get hard results like "Drug X lowered systolic blood pressure an average of 25 points, which is 4 points more than Drug Y, and with fewer side effects." The results are very clear and very satisfying, Drug X is better.
Manual therapy is just not quantifiable in the same way, because it depends so heavily on how it is preformed, who is preforming it, and how you quantify results.
There's many things in and out of medicine like this. Has anyone done a study investigating "Does massage make patients feel better?" Why would anyone spend money on something that has no proven scientific benefit? Because its obvious, people like massage. It's relaxing and stress-relieving and probably promotes good health. I can't prove this, but I'd say its probably true.
At any med school, some time is devoted to non-evidence based medicine. Physicians usually get some training in bedside manner and being culturally sensitive, etc. Has anyone done a study on "Does a physician with excellent bedside manner have a higher cure rate than a physician that just prescribes the correct medication?" Maybe they have, but . . . is it really necessary? We all know what its like to be seen by a friendly, professional doc versus a cold, personality-less physician that doesn't even talk to you. It's just obvious that bedside manner is important, even though maybe it hasn't been "proven" in some super-objective scientific study. Any (MD & DO) med school teaches these values and many other practices of medicine that have "no scientific basis", its just getting a good education.
Suggested reading:
Comparison of Allopathic and Osteopathic medicine
bth
Touro University, College of Medicine. California.
