Out of curiosity, how many people applying or currently attending a medical school in the Caribbean thought about going to an osteophatic medical school to get your D.O. degree? I've read a couple of posts saying to choose the Caribbean as your last choice if possible to become a doctor, and do as much as you can to stay in the states. For people who agree with this, do you include going for a D.O. as a better choice than the Caribbean?
Caribbean or D.O.?
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*grabs the popcorn and makes sure to not forget his drink in the process*
Look, this question is a no win situation, you ask here on SDN it will almost be exclusively geared towards DO, you ask at ValueMD and it will be geared towards Carrib...do the research and decide for yourself. so with that aside and this being SDN, go DO...(here is a link from international forum here in SDN)
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=383374
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There are alot of inaccuracies and many personal opinions in the OP's post.
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right...because valuemd is geared towards carribbean, just as SDN is towards american schools, although I will admit that there are alot more inaccuracies over in valuemd in regards to osteopathic schools
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the OPs post in the valuemd thread is defintely biased, but there's some good back and forth...i dunno
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i think you are a better fit for a DO school. Go DO!
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Not likely, stay in the MD world. If you have no idea what a DO is you will likely not get into a DO school anyhow. If you don't know any DO's you'll be even worse off when it comes time for your LOR. Be that as it may-- I have friends who went the caribbean route and they got sound educations while I stayed in the states.
G'luck on the islands
Did you go to allopathic or osteopathic school in the States? I don't know why, but for some odd reason these threads turn into D.O vs M.D discussion. It really should be U.S vs Foreign, IMHO. With that in mind I advise the OP to make every effort to get in U.S school M.D or D.O. If all attempts fail then go Carib.
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Did you go to allopathic or osteopathic school in the States? I don't know why, but for some odd reason these threads turn into D.O vs M.D discussion. It really should be U.S vs Foreign, IMHO. With that in mind I advise the OP to make every effort to get in U.S school M.D or D.O. If all attempts fail then go Carib.
I am in osteopathic school now. I have friends who went to Carib because they were older like me, and didn't want to wait for the process here. I was considering the same. I have other EM friend who is about to be allopathic EM program director tell me to stay in states and go allo or osteo and he was sincere in his plea to stay in the states. Sure the big 4 carib schools can produce competitive people, and they do every year. However, they are a very small minority of their class who would have done well in a stateside school but for their own personal reasons went to the carib. Nothing wrong with that now, but in the future I see problems. However, generallypeople who go to carib, well, I don't want to start a war. ( I emphasize generally because I know it's not all FMG and I know some smart people who went to carib)
As the osteopathic world keeps sprouting up schools everywhere you look and the allo world increases their class sizes it is going to squeeze out the FMG's. Not now but it will get tighter and tighter for them every year during the next decade, until only the FMG superstars who rock the boards are going to match. American trained allos and osteos are going to be prefered. If not by PD, they will be prefered by gov regulation if there are chances that American trained people are going to get crunched out by a FMG --It's not gonna happen. American schools have bigger pockets for the politicians. That is why AUC is getting on the bandwagon and opening their own osteo school in Colorado.
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Same argument was made 20 years ago about DO's, who were at that time considered, at best, 2nd class citizens of medicine. There was the fear of more MD programs sprouting up, and squeezing out the DOs........never happened. I remember my father, who is an MD, trying to convince his sister not to go to NYCOM in the early 90's. His argument was that there would be no future in osteopathic medicine. Today, he's the first to admit that he was absolutely wrong.
Furthermore, schools like ROSS and SGU produce more residents every year than most US programs.
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You may be right. I know my school is aggressively creating new residency training positions in every field of medicine from nuerosurgery on down and looking for more hospitals to collaberate with but to this point they haven't created enough positions to cover a third of my class size so therefore we will have to head into the ACGME world. I would bet that these other new DO schools haven't been as aggressive as my school at creating new training positions either. Mostly due to their rural locations that would prohibit them from creating new residencies.
And yes though your father was wrong then. Today is different though, and med schools are sprouting up like weeds today. That wasn't the case back then. It was only talk. I agree that if the amount of training positions are created to offset the amount new allo class sizes and new osteo schools the FMG has nothing to worry about. But trying to start a new residency is more difficult than starting a new school. Add to that, legislation signed by Slick Willie in 1997 capping residencies at their current size means they can't grow, even if they wanted to. And my only argument is that the American trained student will be protected, that's all.
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The US population is growing like wild fire, which includes the open flood gates at the southern border, the babyboomers are ready to retire, and lets not forget all the MD and DOs actually leaving medicine in the first place.
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I understand your point that there is a need for the FMG to fill. But everything you point to only addresses the need of the FMG. What you need to address is the lack of available residency training positions. It's growth is not keeping up with the amount of new American medical school growth. In fact, in some areas we are going in reverse. I know specialty positions in optho that are closing down because it isn't a big money maker for hospitals any more. That's the main issue that needs to be addressed, and it is a more difficult issue to fix. When a FM program doesn't fill up, after a couple of years of doing that, that program will loose that slot and it happens.
This doesn't give a breakdown of schools for carib and I'm sure the big 3 or 4 match more than 50%
54.5% of active green cards/ Non-US citizens FMGs don't match.
50.0% of active US citizens (IMGs) don't match.
http://www.nrmp.org/advancedata2007.pdf
Go to page 3
Again, I am not knocking the USIMG--I was gonna be one at one time and I have successful friends who did go through SGU, Ross and AUC.--I am just saying --well, you can read above what I said.
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dont they accept like 600 students a year into their classes? that might be why.
