DO Career opportunities, as seen from a concerned parent's perspective

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DefiantDoctor

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I heard the gap between MD and DO is disappearing.
 
I will give you an honest answer here. If your ambition and expectations of your father are grounded in prestige, it will not likely be satisfied even if you do get into Stanford, UC etc..

These percentages and prestige don't mean much to a lot of people, hence the apprehensive nature of approach to these types of threads. If you are going to an Osteopathic Medical School and want to go to Standford, Yale, JHU for residency- good. Do it and don't let anyone stop you. What everyone else is doing or thinking is irrelevant and I'm not going to waste my time writing answers to those questions. Focus on tangibles.
 
DefiantDoctor said:
It's not grounded in prestige. He's wondering why DOs, given their qualifications, are not practicing in places like Stanford Med. Every definition states that DOs are as qualified as MDs, but then why the difference in representation. And if you are saying this is based on prestige, why does even a small town like Bakersfield not have too many DOs? I think that's a fair question. He is 100% sure that I'll get a great paying job as a DO, but he's wondering about the location.
Click to expand...

Have him read this:


http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=596504
 
Tell him to get over it. Your career opportunities will come down in large part to you (board scores, rotations). Residency opportunities are slightly lessened for DOs, but if he's expecting you to land Yale or anything like that, you're gonna have to put your nose to the grindstone almost regardless of where you end up.

Oh, and the idea that a national statistic should be found in any one hospital is ridiculous. That's like saying "average households have 1 dog for every four people, how come this one has five?"

And the notion that FM/IM/Peds are somehow inferior because of their salary average is also ridiculous. Surely you've read various DO mission statements that specifically recruit to produce primary care physicians in their area (I know, some MD schools do this too).
 
And California appears to be a very different animal from the rest of the US, so I can't really touch that one.
 
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DefiantDoctor said:
It's not grounded in prestige. He's wondering why DOs, given their qualifications, are not practicing in places like Stanford Med. Every definition states that DOs are as qualified as MDs, but then why the difference in representation. And if you are saying this is based on prestige, why does even a small town like Bakersfield not have too many DOs? I think that's a fair question. He is 100% sure that I'll get a great paying job as a DO, but he's wondering about the location.
Click to expand...

TUCOM grad, Stanford residency, pediatrics
http://stanfordhospital.org/profiles/Karli_Cleary/

DMU grad, Palliative Care, Internal Medicine
http://stanfordhospital.org/profiles/Denis_Bouvier/

PCOM, in the Dept of Surgery
http://stanfordhospital.org/profiles/physician/Catherine_Porter/

PCOM grad, fellowship at Stanford, Peds Heme Onc
http://stanfordhospital.org/profiles/Kara_Davis/

NYCOM grad, EM
http://stanfordhospital.org/profiles/Ayesha_Sattar/

LECOM, neurosurgery
http://stanfordhospital.org/profiles/Timothy_Gates/

PCOM, transplant nephrologist
http://www.ucsfhealth.org/david.wojciechowski

KCOM, child psychiatry (residency at Mayo, fellowship at Yale)
http://psych.ucsf.edu/faculty.aspx?id=5130


You or your dad mentioned money a lot in the above posts. You do realize that academic medicine pays significantly less than private practice? The difference can be hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. If I were to stay on as clinical faculty at my current location (university setting with medical school, acgme residencies and fellowships), I would essentially be taking a $200,000/year pay cut.

And up until recently, there only a small handful of DO schools before the explosion of new schools. And the history and tradition of osteopathic medicine placed a great emphasis on primary care, the "old fashion country doctor" that have treated many people across many generations. It is only recently in modernization was there such a big push towards specialization. The salary difference between specialists and pcp came about around the mid to late 20th century.

But as the examples above, DOs are not limited to being PCP.


So tell your dad to do his own research before making asinine and ignorant conclusions about osteopathic medicine.
 
DefiantDoctor said:
I understand that the national statistic will not be represented in every hospital. But why is it in some areas that the national statistic is very hardly represented, for example, in academic medicine? And he never mentioned residency, he understands that residencies are open to DOs and MDs. He meant literally practicing in a hospital. As for Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, or Pediatrics being inferior due to lower salary, that;s not true. He's making a statement as to the financial aspect of being those physicians, not the quality of those doctors.

And also, that's his point. Why is CA a different animal? Hell, why is Texas a different animal? Why are these animals seemingly "not nice" to DO physicians?
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You tell me, I'm not from either of these states. I know in-staters that apply MD don't get the same benefit of the doubt with low stats that kids in other states do. I'm guessing it's due to the ratio of applicants:slots. I doubt CA is "not nice", but rather it puts out far more MD physicians than DOs by the number of schools. Texas mandates that ~90% of their school's students come from the state and have their own application system.

As for the rest, he used the term "confinement", so I'm not necessarily buying it. You used quotes indicating the questions came straight from him and the tone of the questions is bothersome. Academic medicine... so teaching? Research? DO schools don't emphasize research opportunities as much, but some schools do offer them. It's up to you to find out which ones do and don't. Practicing... well didn't you answer your own question? DOs comprise 7% of the nation's physicians. And we've cleared up that you don't expect the national statistic to reflect any one hospital. And that many DO schools recruit in a specific manner. So some hospitals will come close to that number, and others won't. And I'm sure you knew that practice can take place exclusively outside of a hospital.
 
top academic places like ucsf or stanford will always prefer people with research experience - from a top tier school.
the vast majority of med students, md or do, don't do any research in med school.
(but there are do's in research. i did a quick book search for ortho and these are recent books that have full chapters written by do's:
Core Knowledge in Orthopaedics: Foot and Ankle
Core Knowledge in Orthopaedics: Spine
Spine Surgery: Techniques, Complication Avoidance, and Management
The Comprehensive Treatment of the Aging Spine: Minimally Invasive & Advanced Techniques
Complications of Pediatric and Adult Spinal Surgery
Motion Preservation Surgery of the Spine: Advanced Techniques and Controversies
Rothman-Simeone's The Spine
Spine Secrets Plus
Surgical Anatomy and Techniques to the Spine
Morrey's The Elbow and Its Disorders
Green's Operative Hand Surgery
Surgical Techniques in Total Knee Arthroplasty)
 
In my home state, there is one med school (MD), before Marian (DO) opens next fall. There are a TON of DOs that are hospital attendings and residency/fellowship PDs, in addition to residents & fellows, at this particular allopathic teaching network.
 
Not much difference between DO and MD but reason UCSF or Stanford prefers MD is simple. Since you mention engineering just strictly go with odds. Odds are higher MCAT GPA students are in MD program. They were the better students at that point in time. Chances are they have better step scores and they end up at UCSF etc. OTOH some DO students did well too and they also end up in those programs. But majority of these students will not do as well as majority of MD students in step exams and hence the discrepancy. If you are looking at prestige I see where you are coming from but if you want to help people Do gives you ample opportunity. I am not trying to put anyone down but strictly going by percentages.
 
First and foremost, I guarantee the OP that all of your questions could have been answered in previous, almost weekly, DO vs. MD forums. I usually hate these weekly forums for "what can I do as a lowly DO" threads, but since you truly are opposed to doing the research for yourself, I would have to ask what the impetus for asking if it's possible for a DO to get into these "brand name" schools, whatever the quality difference you may perceive. Don't plan on yourself being the one "exception" that gets in 'here' and matches 'there' and if you're still happy with that, join us on the other side. Make sure that you give your parents a real view of what's going on so they don't turn into nervous "tiger parents" later on when you get a great job that they may have a problem bragging about to the other "tiger parents."

I say that you get excited about a certain field now and know that this is the only line of work you want to do. If a doctor is a good businessman, he should be making somewhere around 200K within at least 5 years of finishing residency for any of the fields, and possibly a lot more in some specialties, so money shouldn't be the biggest factor, you'll be comfortable. There are enough posts about salaries started even within the last week, so I'll let you look for them. Find the area you want to work in, drive around or use Google Earth to look around the hospitals and see if they're a place you'd like to work in, then look at a staff listing for full-time and adjunct staff there and check how many DOs they have on staff. Don't be afraid to call the hospital recruiter/HR person in charge of medical staff to look for any trends.

I hope this one gets locked soon. :lock:

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DefiantDoctor said:
I understand that the national statistic will not be represented in every hospital. But why is it in some areas that the national statistic is very hardly represented, for example, in academic medicine? And he never mentioned residency, he understands that residencies are open to DOs and MDs. He meant literally practicing in a hospital. As for Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, or Pediatrics being inferior due to lower salary, that;s not true. He's making a statement as to the financial aspect of being those physicians, not the quality of those doctors.

And also, that's his point. Why is CA a different animal? Hell, why is Texas a different animal? Why are these animals seemingly "not nice" to DO physicians?
Click to expand...


You should also understand osteopathic medicine is and has from its beginnings been somewhat evolving. That explains part of the patchiness that currently exists in specialties represented by DOs though that too is evolving. Also, as mentioned, up until recently there were very few osteopathic med schools which is part of why they are concentrated heavily in some areas of the country and states. For many years osteopaths also fought to remain separate but equal digging their own hole by isolating their institutions and hospitals from most the "academic" hospitals that are great teaching sites today. That was to their and our detriment but fortunately this has changed. Finally, California is a unique beast because of its turbulent history with DOs and MDs and especially the one time merger of degrees further confusing whether DOs should be recognized or just swallowed up within the MD.
Texas, in my experience, is not overly hostile to DOs, TCOM all around has a great reputation.

Realize that even 20 years ago there was such a huge gap in all facets of the allopathic and ostepathic worlds it is amazing how quality, recognition, respect and all around careers of DOs have a much less limited or stigmatized outlook now and I believe even less in the coming years. Those of us entering osteopathic medicine now will have a big part to play in what osteopathic medicine means and dictate how our profession evolves in the coming years. I personally believe based on my interactions with current practicing DOs, other students and my peers the best is yet to come. We may have something still to prove to the larger medical and healthcare community but I have no doubt the more people interact nf learn of us, they will respect the DO without question.
 
Why don't we make a separate sub-forum for MD vs DO threads? It would make navigating to useful threads in pre-allo/pre-osteo ssssoooo much easier.
 
luke_i__m_your_father_by_wireful-d3gy6gp.gif
 
CA is difficult for MD and DO, the market is saturated, especially in SoCal. It is also one of the more accepting states for DOs. Read about the history of osteopathic medicine and you'll know why, I don't care enough to spell it out for you.

Prestige does not necessarily = better medicine. Keep in mind Med schools are ranked by research funding.
 
One of the most blissful days of my life would be to see "Moved: DO vs MD" when logging into SDN. I guess SDN makes more money if people are attracted to the troll stuff, so that may not be as likely.

How about anything remotely resembling a DO vs. MD thread gets locked and the OP gets a week off to research the topic for himself?
 
If your credentials are good enough for UCSF, UCLA, or standord, what the hell are you doing applying to DO schools anyway.
 
Why do you care so much what your father says? You're only good enough for DO stats wise so suck it up and live with it. Theres no need to rationalize your decision to your dad. You'll be a physician and you may have to deal with the bias of DOs vs MDs, especially in recognized programs within competitive residencies. The bias exists and while its fading it won't go completely away anytime soon.

I'm not sugarcoating it and I'll likely be in an Osteopathic Institution. You will get a world of opportunities within a DO school, but it won't make your life as easy as an MD school. You have to work harder than your MD cohorts and in the end, even if you have amazing stats, they may not even grant you an interview (search the forums for proof, especially in Osteo).

And at the end, your dad just seems to want the prestige to call his son an "MD" over a "DO".
 
I'd be surprised if you'd actually want to work at one of those hospitals if you knew what it was like.
 
You seem like you know what's going on and you'll have to decide if medicine is what you want to do. It's hard to find a job/residency in CA. You'll likely enter primary care as a DO, but everything besides urology, neurosurgery, ent, optho, derm, and rad-onc are reasonable goals as a DO. it's unlikely you'll be hired by an ivy league hospital. You will, however, be a doctor and you will make enough money to live comfortably.

If you are concerned with money EM pays like 300k, PM&R is 250K, pulm/crit care (which is one of the least competitive IM fellowships) pays 280k, anesthesia is around 350k (attendings at this crappy hospital I rotated at get 490k). None of these require you to be a super star.
 
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cliquesh said:
You seem like you know what's going on and you'll have to decide if medicine is what you want to do. It's hard to find a job/residency in CA. You'll likely enter primary care as a DO, but everything besides urology, neurosurgery, ent, optho, derm, and rad-onc are reasonable goals as a DO. it's unlikely you'll be hired by an ivy league hospital. You will, however, be a doctor and you will make enough money to live comfortably.

If you are concerned with money EM pays like 300k, PM&R is 250K, pulm/crit care (which is one of the least competitive IM fellowships) pays 280k, anesthesia is around 350k. None of these require you to be a super star.
Click to expand...

Rural Primary Care also pays well, and what I hear loan forgiveness is available for working in certain locations (though I am not really sure what the stipulation specifics and likelyhood of this is).
 
I applied to anesthesia. I applied to 60 programs and got 43 invites. It's not a huge deal being a DO. Your opportunities will be less. You won't likely end up at a top 10. It is unlikely you'll match Acgme surgery, of any sorts, derm, or rad-onc. Just find something you like besides those. If you are interested in surgery, AOA general surgery and AOA orthopedics, are reasonable goals.
 
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we've found one of the rarer trolls, the "Prestige Troll." Be a doctor, graduate from a residency where you'll learn a lot and go to an underserved area and help people for a better than usual salary with loan repayment benefits. Whomever has to get over their ego to NOT go to a Prestigious School, Residency or Fellowship needs to do it now or it will haunt you for the rest of your career and will make you give up opportunities you wouldn't have even looked at before, but will work to your advantage in the end.

A) You can work wherever you want, there are only licensing rules per state that you can easily look up when the time is right. Any big city is going to have more competition than the smaller rural ones where you'll be online either using the SEARCH function on SDN or playing World of Warcraft on your dial-up modem to AOL.

B) The loan amount can be upwards of 500-600K for anyone, especially at a DO school since they're less likely to get government funding, accept it and get started on paying it back ASAP.

C) Major "brand name" institutions want people that have a large clinical research background, which is hard for anyone to come by, but especially at DO schools where we don't have much connection to research programs at any affiliated (more likely unaffiliated) research institutions. You will be competing with a ton of MDs or DOs for those kinds of spots, so if academic medicine at a non-Brand Name institution would please you and/or the tiger parents, then go for it or it's back to that whole "I'll be the exception" thing. If not, go wherever you can get a combined MD/DO/PhD program and it will be a bit easier for you to live in academic medicine where you're almost guaranteed to take a longer time paying your loans back and will be doing bench work and grant-writing for much of your time while your classmates are taking care of actual patients.

Have a great Christmas and, hopefully, an enlightening and defiant doctor discussion with your parents.

Gimp
 
DefiantDoctor said:
I'm personally (before I start med school) interested in emergency med and/or trauma med. Obviously that has potential to change, and I understand if it does change to surgery or rad-onc or whatever, I damn well better have phenomenal grades and board scores to show that I am competitive as a DO, and there is still is no guarantee I'll match into those fields. That being said, neither I nor he is upset I'll be a DO. I'l be a frickin doctor!
Click to expand...

If that's what you really want to do, EM, pulm/crit care IM, critical care anesthesia, and trauma surgery are all reasonable as a DO. Here is a list of PCOM's surgery residency alumni. You can see they went to decent places for trauma surgery, http://www.pcomsurgery.org/Program-Alumni.php
 
DefiantDoctor said:
First, I never said anything about prestigious residencies. My question was PURELY financial, based on the salaries of different fields. 5k a month is more than my dad pays on property tax and his mortgage per month, and as a young doctor, where I won't be making the median salary right off the bat, knocking down my loan will be difficult. Yes I do accept I'll have a huge loan to pay off, what I'm trying to figure out is how long that will be, and how I can make preparations for that to make it easier on myself if I do choose to go to FM/IM/Pediatrics. I, however, have already indicated my preference for EM twice in this thread, and I only mentioned surgery as a caveat that interests can change. I also want to do things like own a house, start a family and the like, and I ideally would like to do that without having the shadow of an insurmountable student debt hanging over me. Is that so wrong of me to want? And yes, I know that even if I became an MD, I would still have a huge loan to pay off, but as you yourself stated, I'll have the potential for some federal funding. As a DO, if that's not available, it's definitely something for me to consider. I think it's more asinine and childish to brand me a troll when I simply have concerns about other aspects of my future that are directly related to the consequences of me becoming a doctor, DO or MD.

Secondly, I know I can work anywhere. I'll be honest. I want to work, at some point in my life, in CA. It's just something I want to do. I don't care if I spend 10 years working in WV or back country North Carolina. I really want to come back, in my life, and work at one of the hospitals I volunteered at, to come full circle, cheesy as it sounds. I never said it wasn't possible, I was apparently under-informed about the difficulties of working in CA as a DO, which my dad enlightened me to. Once again, why is this a problem??

I have a lot of research experience. I'm getting my MS in computational biology, and have published abstracts working under a pathologist. I have helped design computer programs for bioinformatic analysis of proteins. Telling me that these name brand schools want clinical research is not something I knew about, and am excited to pursue. I feel research improves my creativity and analytical abilities, and I thank you for that information, as I think it will help me become a better doctor. Even if DO schools don't have the most research opportunities readily available, then the impetus is on me to go and seek them out.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you as well. Try to make some of the same points you did without name calling next time?
Click to expand...
You decided to be lazy and post the same post that comes to SDN several times a month, even several times a week now that vacation is in full swing for most students. This is why you'll get the flack.

You should keep your medical school loans for 30 years since it will probably be the cheapest money you can buy. Or you can pay it off quickly if you can maintain your resident lifestyle for as long as possible.

You will have a tougher time overall getting into EM, surgery or any of the ROAD specialties whether MD or DO, and I hope you don't shoot for academic medicine if there is even a slight hint of hesitation about the money. If you're looking for another financial route to pay for medical school, play the lottery every single week and hope for the best. Otherwise, you're no better than anyone else on SDN or in medical school, so your expectations shouldn't be any better. I was speaking about the school getting funding by organizations such as NIH, etc; you're eligible for the same student loans every other US med student gets once you matriculate.

You're putting the cart before the horse, or in this case, about 88 reindeer and they don't like to be second guessed. Focus on getting into a medical school, apply broadly and spend a ton on your applications if you feel the need to do so. Above all else, you are not special in that you can skip the Terms Of Service and not research your question on hundreds of posts with questions exactly like yours. There are residents, like myself that come through here to help out, but now we may get sanctions against us for being too "real" with people, so do whatever you want, but get YOUR priorities in line.

http://studentdoctor.net/online-service-agreement/
Please see #3.
 
JGimpel said:
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we've found one of the rarer trolls, the "Prestige Troll." Be a doctor, graduate from a residency where you'll learn a lot and go to an underserved area and help people for a better than usual salary with loan repayment benefits. Whomever has to get over their ego to NOT go to a Prestigious School, Residency or Fellowship needs to do it now or it will haunt you for the rest of your career and will make you give up opportunities you wouldn't have even looked at before, but will work to your advantage in the end.

A) You can work wherever you want, there are only licensing rules per state that you can easily look up when the time is right. Any big city is going to have more competition than the smaller rural ones where you'll be online either using the SEARCH function on SDN or playing World of Warcraft on your dial-up modem to AOL.

B) The loan amount can be upwards of 500-600K for anyone, especially at a DO school since they're less likely to get government funding, accept it and get started on paying it back ASAP.

C) Major "brand name" institutions want people that have a large clinical research background, which is hard for anyone to come by, but especially at DO schools where we don't have much connection to research programs at any affiliated (more likely unaffiliated) research institutions. You will be competing with a ton of MDs or DOs for those kinds of spots, so if academic medicine at a non-Brand Name institution would please you and/or the tiger parents, then go for it or it's back to that whole "I'll be the exception" thing. If not, go wherever you can get a combined MD/DO/PhD program and it will be a bit easier for you to live in academic medicine where you're almost guaranteed to take a longer time paying your loans back and will be doing bench work and grant-writing for much of your time while your classmates are taking care of actual patients.

Have a great Christmas and, hopefully, an enlightening and defiant doctor discussion with your parents.

Gimp
Click to expand...

How did you come to those nos?
 
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