No way. Pretty sure that degree accreditations will not be retroactive. The DO's that have graduated and become attending physicians will still hold their DO degree. So, I doubt that the term DO will dissipate in a mere 20 years.
I agree. It is unlikely, but everyone taking the same boards and bringing up AOA residencies to ACGME standards, yes, I see that. I even see that there could be more competition for DO schools and even possibly having to slow down on opening new schools.
If there ever were a full changeover, DOs would probably be granted MD degrees in a similar manner to what happened in California back in the day.
It's all a ploy to absorb Osteopathic Medicine and it's all the AOA's fault. They went crazy with opening new schools because they thought an increased number of DOs would translate to political power. What happened instead? Not enough residencies for their own graduates, so now they are stuck with depending on the ACGME match for their graduates to have jobs. They came back to the table on the residency issue due to the ****storm produced from the idea of fellowships being closed off to us. The AOA, instead of recruiting the small number of people that cared to be a DO, they became a smarter alternative to the Caribbean MD because you stay in the US. 20 years ago it was entirely possible to be a Caribbean Urologist. 20 years later as DO has increased, CaribMD has fallen deeper and deeper. This has shifted the CaribMD applicant heavily into Osteopathic Medicine. Do these people care about being DO? Nope. Would they take MD immediately and without hesitation if it comes forth to them? Yes. If the DO profession is lucky, they will continue to exist as OMM/NMM residencies and perhaps schools will move onto saying they are now "MD schools with an Osteopathic Philosophy." Everyone will celebrate it saying "well, Dr. Still was an MD after all."
DOs being absorbed isn't really all that bad of a thing. We all practice medicine. OMM should be a specialty or area of practice, not something you build an entire medical training process around. As to the osteopathic philosophy, it isn't really all that different from the MD philosophy of treatment and care. Separate but equal never works in practice. For the good of the students and our medical system as a whole, it would be best if the two systems were to just merge and be done with it. The only reason the AOA exists is to perpetuate the power of its own leadership. Were it not for this, once medicine was found to cause more good than harm, osteopathic medical schools would likely have entered the fold of the MD world long ago, with OMM fading to an optional field of study, or being spun off to an entirely separate profession from medicine, as it is in the rest of the world. I say all of this as someone who believes he will be better served by an osteopathic medical application, who never applied MD, but ultimately believes that unification is the best way forward.
Well, it is definitely not bad for us because we'll be doctors by then and it can only benefit our career. Now the alternative is that Osteopathic Medicine gave you and me the opportunity to become physicians when nobody else would. We've seen many amazing physicians that would have never had the opportunity to become physicians if they had hit the numbers wall today; this number includes US MD graduates that entered when having no EC and a 27 was good enough. Would you really want to close the door for every generation to come? I sincerely don't know the answer to that because you can argue standards will go up anyway, but in my experience, Osteopathic Schools do look at your entire application.
I could have attended an allopathic school, most likely, as I had the numbers for it (3.8s/3.8c, 35 MCAT, 10,000 hours of inpatient experience in allied health, decent ECs otherwise, strong LORs) but chose to apply DO because I liked the type of people that DO schools seem to attract. They generally feel more down to earth and less gunner-ey than most of the MD students I'd meet in the hospitals I have worked at. I would lament the loss of medical student diversity (nontrads, underdogs, etc) that would come with losing the DO degree. Overall, however, I do feel that it would be beneficial for the medical profession as a whole if there were a merger, and that any losses would be offset in my mind by the gains in quality control and the additional research that would come from such a transition (MD schools are much better about acquiring research funding). It's a worthwhile trade, in my mind.
I did, yes. I was a bit late in the MD cycle by the time I got my MCAT (I wasn't expecting to do so well), I really love a particular DO school that I had visited previously, and I am interested in fairly DO friendly specialties. It's not that MD students are not awesome people, it's just that the students my particular school of interest picks seem to be really great people that I will probably fit in with quite well. Their biggest selection criteria is school fit and personality. The MD schools near where I live are very research-intensive, and thus personality takes a back seat to research experience, major, and GPA. I just didn't feel like I was a good fit when I visited them versus the DO school I was accepted at.
