ACGME Ophthalmology programs that accept DOs?

[fluoresceindrop]

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Hi,

I've been interested in ophthalmology for a while and I know ophthalmology is competitive. I also know that there are osteopathic ophthalmology programs, but I don't know enough about them. From what I've been reading on SDN, lack of funding is a consistent theme among the osteopathic ophthalmology programs.

At the moment I am a 2nd year DO student. I want to do my 3rd year ophthalmology elective at an ACGME program that had or currently has DO residents. Do you know of any programs? I am aware of 3 programs (University of Buffalo, an ophthalmology dept in Arksansas, and Northshore LIJ in New York). Although I have a preference for rotating in California and anywhere in the East Coast, I am willing to travel to other ACGME-approved locations. Thank you for reading!

 

[JeetKuneDo]

U of Chicago just took one this year. Also, I think in the Opthalmology forum there's a sticky with two DO students describing their interview experiences. Altogether the two of them had about 10-12 interviews combined.

 

[da Vincis World]

I believe Palmetto Health in South Carolina took a DO this past year.

 

[DopaDO]

U of Chicago just took one this year. Also, I think in the Opthalmology forum there's a sticky with two DO students describing their interview experiences. Altogether the two of them had about 10-12 interviews combined.

I can't find this. Can someone provide a link?

 

[fluoresceindrop]

Thanks, da Vincis World!

 

[fluoresceindrop]

Hi JeetKuneDo,

Can you send me the link of DO students interviewing for ACGME ophth programs? Thank you!

 

[JeetKuneDo]

I can't find this. Can someone provide a link?

Hi JeetKuneDo,

Can you send me the link of DO students interviewing for ACGME ophth programs? Thank you!

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=882398

Sorry guys, I guess it wasn't a sticky. I found it a few pages deep into the forum. Two DO students posted their results. Only one of them shared the interview locations though.

 

[JGimpel]

Here are the facts, most students that are going for the super-competitive ROAD, Neuro or Optho spots and decided to go the DO route knew that they had a tough journey ahead to become eligible to even rotate in that specialty for a month, which is mandatory for many of them.

Their research on http://opportunities.osteopathic.org/ showed them that there were less than 50 spots open for each of the above fields and that it would take an act of God or a personal phone call from the Pope on your behalf to even get you an interview from those respective DO programs, so you decided to branch out and look at the MD residencies.

You will find that very few take students from the DO world and that even though there are more actual slots for those specialties, there are a ton more people that have taken the USMLE and done all of their MD-accredited coursework that they would easily accept for credit. If you think you will be that exception, like the one student out of 300 that graduated from Ross or SGU that year, so be it, but definitely have a backup plan. If you can actually get the Pope to fly out from the Vatican, gas up the Pope-mobile and talk to the PD of the program of your choice about giving you a shot, you'll definitely get a seat there and on Oprah.

Start calling the MD programs you would like to join and ask if there are any DOs at that institution that you could shadow or if they incorporate any OMM in their training and gauge their interest by the type of response you get. You can get started here to know what your chances overall are:
http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2012.pdf

These kinds of threads don't make us look any better and are insulting, almost as bad as the DO vs. MD threads. I wish people would just use the search function and save us the trouble.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Start calling the MD programs you would like to join and ask if there are any DOs at that institution that you could shadow or if they incorporate any OMM in their training and gauge their interest by the type of response you get. You can get started here to know what your chances overall are:
http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2012.pdf

Somehow, I don't think the bolded would turn out too well.

 

[JGimpel]

Somehow, I don't think the bolded would turn out too well.

It definitely wouldn't, but it's better he learns now from his own experience than later. Us lowly DOs can do a lot for our patients, but the opportunities for us getting the most competitive specialty spots are tough, to say the least.

 

[Textbookversion]

University of Arizona has at least one right now.

 

[JGimpel]

University of Arizona has at least one right now.

If any DO thinks they've got that one in several thousand shot of matching any ROAD or Optho spot at an ACGME program, do this: Count up all of the MD Optho spots in the US and somehow find out how many DOs matched into any of them and divide the latter by the former. Accounting for rounding error, statistical significance of the number you get and being within the proper confidence interval your chances are close enough to zero to say ZERO.

If anyone wants to argue that they'll be that unique snowflake that survives through the pressure cooker of the MD admissions process as a DO, see my above post about enlisting the help of the Pope. Being Catholic wouldn't hurt, in that case.

 

[sylvanthus]

My school just had two people match ophtho acgme and we are a new DO program with a bad match list last year.

 

[cliquesh]

My school just had two people match ophtho acgme and we are a new DO program with a bad match list last year.

Yea, I actually don't think ophtho is that DO unfriendly. If you look at the ophtho board, DOs are matching with scores in the high 230's and low 240's without much research.

 

[cliquesh]

If any DO thinks they've got that one in several thousand shot of matching any ROAD or Optho spot at an ACGME program, do this: Count up all of the MD Optho spots in the US and somehow find out how many DOs matched into any of them and divide the latter by the former. Accounting for rounding error, statistical significance of the number you get and being within the proper confidence interval your chances are close enough to zero to say ZERO.

If anyone wants to argue that they'll be that unique snowflake that survives through the pressure cooker of the MD admissions process as a DO, see my above post about enlisting the help of the Pope. Being Catholic wouldn't hurt, in that case.

I got over 35 acgme anesthesia invites. My classmate with a low 240 got around 12 acgme radiology invites. I don't think ROA are that impossible for DOs. I just think few DOs have an interest in those fields and, more importantly, have the board scores for those specialities. I think less than 10 people in my class got above a 240. I really only know of 3, but I'm sure there are a few more.

Acgme dermatology is pretty impossible.

 

[Textbookversion]

If any DO thinks they've got that one in several thousand shot of matching any ROAD or Optho spot at an ACGME program, do this: Count up all of the MD Optho spots in the US and somehow find out how many DOs matched into any of them and divide the latter by the former. Accounting for rounding error, statistical significance of the number you get and being within the proper confidence interval your chances are close enough to zero to say ZERO.

If anyone wants to argue that they'll be that unique snowflake that survives through the pressure cooker of the MD admissions process as a DO, see my above post about enlisting the help of the Pope. Being Catholic wouldn't hurt, in that case.

Okay? I was just answering the question. There is at least one at the U of A. You seem pretty bitter about the whole DO experience.

 

[ajh1983]

If any DO thinks they've got that one in several thousand shot of matching any ROAD or Optho spot at an ACGME program, do this: Count up all of the MD Optho spots in the US and somehow find out how many DOs matched into any of them and divide the latter by the former. Accounting for rounding error, statistical significance of the number you get and being within the proper confidence interval your chances are close enough to zero to say ZERO.

If anyone wants to argue that they'll be that unique snowflake that survives through the pressure cooker of the MD admissions process as a DO, see my above post about enlisting the help of the Pope. Being Catholic wouldn't hurt, in that case.

this crap again lol. Ok I'll bite - your argument would almost be valid if there were equal numbers of DO and MD graduates, an equal step1 average between populations, and an equal interest in competitive specialties... and also it were still the 1980s descrimination-wise.

All of which are not true. Go away. The ratio of DOs in most specialties can easily traced to the number of DOs in the "applying population"

I'm a student who had life trouble first two years of college, turned it around, and scored 99%tile on the MCAT.

I'm going DO because A) my cGPA B) they interviewed me to see who I really was. When I handle step 1 the same way I do every test, I will be interviewing specialty of choice as well.

Enough of this garbage. Every DO and MD I spoke to (specialists) on shadows had nothing but positive things to say of the competitive and motivated DO docs they had encountered. Stop propagating crap.

 

[JGimpel]

Watch out for blanket statements about someone you don't know. I'm not bitter about being a DO or what I can do with my degree, I hate our leadership at the AOA and the organization that makes our COMLEX exam because they keep getting us into more crap with their arrogance, that's for another thread that seems to come up weekly.

Another pet peeve is when kids that have everything decided for them by their parents come here and post questions when they might as well have their parents read through here instead, but that's for another thread.

In this case I'm trying to prevent a bunch of people wasting their time on away rotations that won't lead anywhere. If you want to suggest that just because 1 or 2 people from a class of 150-200+ students at every DO school makes it into field X, that means that every person has a shot, that's simply not true. I actually am looking at the AOA match report for last year that has a total of 12 AOA Opthalmology spots that filled all but one of them last year, so the DO Optho route is almost impossible. You can log into the AOA site if you want to see it for yourself.

The reason why the AMA 2011 Match report shows zeros across the board for Optho is because they and Urology have their own match system.

In case you want to look at the rest of the AMA match results for last year:

http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2011.pdf

Page 'v' states that there were 37,735 total applications for all spots, and the number of PGY2 spots for Optho was 460. There were 784 total applicants for those spots. You can do all kinds of math with those numbers and come up with whatever justification you want.

Of course DOs are going to look to the AMA side to match Optho since there are over 400 advanced/categorical positions open after you finish your intern year. If you're applying before 2015, you'll need to do an AMA internship first. Here are the results from last year's Optho match through the San Francisco Match system that is used:

http://www.sfmatch.org/residency/ophthalmology/about_match/match_report.pdf
http://www.sfmatch.org/residency/ophthalmology/links.htm

I do make use of information that's out there as well as the experience of a much wider group of people than you probably have access to at this point, but if you don't want to take my advice, please hit the ignore button. At this point, I don't see anyone else offering the information that I just put together along and/or more than saying a friend of mine matched this or that. Spend your money whatever way you want. Here's a guide from U of Iowa if you have any individual questions:

http://webeye.ophth.uiowa.edu/eyeforum/tutorials/Iowa-Guide-to-the-Ophthalmology-Match.pdf

As usual, there is a post with a question that someone could have researched on their own, then you call someone out for having an informed opinion to get him to spoon feed everything back to you and you will probably flame him for doing it. Why would you solicit people's opinions on a subject outside of the numbers if you don't want to hear it? If you want the numbers, I just gave them to you and where to find all of them on your own. If you want my opinion, it's really, really tough for a DO to match into ACGME Optho. Enjoy your evening.

 

[deleted245139]

Maybe we should just accept that the ROAD specialties and their access to DO's has changed a bit.
Radiology matches several DO's a year into various programs
Anesthesia matches many DO's a year. Many with just COMLEX
Optho/Ortho and Derm are still largely limited and these will only see those 'snow-flake' candidates.

 

[da Vincis World]

Maybe we should just accept that the ROAD specialties and their access to DO's has changed a bit.
Radiology matches several DO's a year into various programs
Anesthesia matches many DO's a year. Many with just COMLEX
Optho/Ortho and Derm are still largely limited and these will only see those 'snow-flake' candidates.

I don't know about change but most (almost all) DOs that match into competitive MD residencies ("ROADS specialties" ) not only took but did well on USMLE. Please do not think that the COMLEX will open doors for you in the MD ROADS speciality world.

 

[cliquesh]

I don't know about change but most (almost all) DOs that match into competitive MD residencies ("ROADS specialties" ) not only took but did well on USMLE. Please do not think that the COMLEX will open doors for you in the MD ROADS speciality world.

You definitely can match acgme anesthesia with a 600+ comlex. Also, you do not have.to do that great on the usmle. A 230 usmle, which.is.average.for.anesthesia, will get you plenty of interviews.

 

[da Vincis World]

You definitely can match acgme anesthesia with a 600+ comlex. Also, you do not have.to do that great on the usmle. A 230 usmle, which.is.average.for.anesthesia, will get you plenty of interviews.

While you may get away with this at some anesthesia residencies, comlex only would be a hard sell at pretty much all radiology, ophtho, and derm residencies.......as would a 230 on usmle.

If you are interested in these types of residencies as a DO you really need to take and do well on at least usmle step 1.

 

[ajh1983]

Indeed. I won't be happy with less than a 250 on step 1 as I know how competitive it is out there. DO neurosurg spots aren't going to be easily obtained in the post-merger world.

 

[fluoresceindrop]

Arrowhead has a new ophtho program. Did anyone rotate there for ophtho? Any thoughts on the new program?

 

[pattr]

Arrowhead has a new ophtho program. Did anyone rotate there for ophtho? Any thoughts on the new program?

Arrowhead is an AOA program... see my response on your thread.