DO specialties

[ManBroDude]

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FutureDoctorrrr: I think I speak for all of us when I say you've come off as brash, uninformed, and frankly one-dimensional with all your posts. It's getting tiring. Yes, we realize you have made it a huge deal in your head that this OPTI thing is the end of the world. It's not. There's thousands (!) of AOA residency spots left unfilled every year, we're not in bad shape at all. Like DrWily said, just because a school has a certain number of residency spots, it has been shown that going to the affiliated school has next to NO bearing on whether you get in or not.

So please, let's hang up that hat, shall we? Your pet project got it's fifteen minutes of fame. If your panties are still bunching, how about you get off your m****bation station and dial up the AOA and do something about it?

 

[FrkyBgStok]

You have already been educated and corrected about Nova vs KCUMB in regards to OPTI vs actually caring about students. What else do you need to make you STFU? You provide no evidence that OPTIs choose their own students over students from another school, AND you've been shut down by the fact that KCUMB, which has a smaller OPTI than NOVA, provides more help to someone who has to scramble than NOVA does. A direct example that contradicts your stance provided by someone who's been through the process.

Like I said before, if you want to pick your school based on OPTIs alone, go for it. But saying that schools are failing the osteopathic profession by not providing OPTIs for their students and they generally don't care about their students is a load of horse sh~t. Those schools will still fill their classes because people want to be physicians, and don't care about OPTI this and that. You're fighting a futile battle, one that has been dragged across this entire forum. We used to have great discussions here and behaved civilized until you started contaminating every thread will OPTI OPTI OPTI. You even posted that you smiled when you read about an AZCOM student walking through the doors at Mayo Clinic as a Rad Onc. Did that student rely on his OPTI? Lol no. He worked his ass off and got to where he wanted to be.

Also, you must be a sad loner to have no attachments and base your decision to attend medical school on objective information like OPTIs. Yea it's a personal attack. Cry about it.

had me rolling.

 

[DrMediterranean]

So what? That's not what this is about. It's about the larger schools with more resources not doing their part for the profession. I think PNWU has more residencies under planning/development than DMU has total.

My school is great, don't get me wrong. They also have great matches every year. It's just kinda silly how few residencies they have developed for being the 2nd oldest DO school.


I don't think anyone is comfortable with the number of AOA residency spots just because of the number of unfilled FM/IM spots every year (except maybe the party line AOA leadership). There's a reason those go unfilled..think about it.

It's the hyper-growth of DO schools combined with the abysmal growth of GME spots in other specialties that has many on edge. There will be somewhere between 9 and 12 spots TOTAL in ophtho next year. That means there are 1/3 the amount of spots than there are DO schools. It is unfathomably hard to match into specialties like that in the ACGME realm as a DO no matter how you look at it. This ratio is plummeting with so many more schools opeining. Derm is similar (There isn't even a DO that matches every year in ACGME). These are probaly the most extreme examples, but other specialties are going to become hyper-selective as well, precluding many aspiring students from entering their field of choice. In a field like radiology where it is very hard to match ACGME (although students do it every year), there is a little less than 1 DO spot per school.

But it's FM all the way for the AOA..so they'll keep opening up yet more FM programs despite the huge amount of spots that go unfilled every year. There were about 300 unfilled FP spots (half of all FP spots!!!) and 200 unfilled IM spots in 2009. Maybe the AOA should focus on
strengthening primary care specialties in OPTI's rather than expanding them, and expand specialty training before it requires students to be in the 98th percentile to do something other than primary care. Yes DO's are primary care focused, but it should be available for students to choose something else if they desire to. Draw your own conclusions, but be informed before you do so.

http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2011.pdf (page 13 & 14 are of interest)

http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf

http://data.aacom.org/aacomas/do_gme_match_report2009.asp

http://opportunities.osteopathic.org/

/rant

+1. If anything, those unfilled residency spots should be alarming to the profession and the schools. This is not a good thing.

 

[235788]

radiation oncology is the only residency not offered by AOA, but they can go ACGME, so effectively, no. but a DO also effectively has no chance to go into a ACGME radiation oncology residency.

check this guy out. One of the guys i shadowed 🙂

http://www.utoledo.edu/med/depts/radther/feld.html

but he did say he did it back before it was really competitive.

 

[FrkyBgStok]

check this guy out. One of the guys i shadowed 🙂

http://www.utoledo.edu/med/depts/radther/feld.html

but he did say he did it back before it was really competitive.

that's pretty sweet. yeah just googling "radition oncology DO" you can find many people who have done it, and it is still possible now, but it is very competitive and DOs don't have their own residency. As someone mentioned, pathology doesn't either, but with the job outlook for pathologists, it isn't nearly as competitive.

 

[235788]

that's pretty sweet. yeah just googling "radition oncology DO" you can find many people who have done it, and it is still possible now, but it is very competitive and DOs don't have their own residency. As someone mentioned, pathology doesn't either, but with the job outlook for pathologists, it isn't nearly as competitive.

We have a lot of DO specialists in Toledo (one of the renown orthos is a DO). But we're also are pretty close to OU and Mich state. We're pretty DO friendly here.

 

[FrkyBgStok]

Pathology is the best kept secret among specialties. I seriously considered pursuing it.

Get paid a boat load
Great Hours
Next to no liability
Be a frigging expert on disease
...did I mention the hours were awesome? 🙂

yes but reading through the pathology forum and reading through other peoples' posts, the job outlook is pretty grim right now for pathologist. But i have been wrong once before.

 

[ManBroDude]

There isn't a single pathologist EDIT: Medical Examiner in the entire state of Idaho. You've gotta pay big bucks to get a body shipped out of state for an autopsy. I think it's sad that medicine as a field is moving away from pathologists, as that's how the early physicians learned the how's and why's in medicine.
I personally prefer having two-way conversations with people, not just one-way.

 

[FutureDoctorrrr]

"Are you exaggerating or do you really believe that there aren't any pathologists in Idaho?

There shyte-loads of practicing pathologists in Idaho. Do a google search. Who do you think interprets surgical specimens in hospitals, looks at biopsies, runs the labs in larger hospitals, looks at blood smears, runs/interprets complex stains, etc....

There may not be any medical examners, which I think may be what you meant to say. Medical examiners make up a very small portion of practicing pathologists. They also get paid the least for the most part because they usually work for the government. It's a cool job though, I did a rotation with Iowa's ME a few months ago and did autopsies every day 👍. I felt like Dr. G. "

👍 👍 👍 👍

 

[FutureDoctorrrr]

"There will always, always be a need for clinical and laboratory pathologists -- the guys/gals behind the scenes."

👍👍👍👍

 

[FrkyBgStok]

Edit: I think what you and frkybigstok are hung up on is the scaling back of medical examiners. This is definitely a trend, and less autopsies are done every year. If you do a ME fellowship you can't always pick where you want to live, but you'll get a job. It will always be around but it might get smaller as the years go by. There will always, always be a need for clinical and laboratory pathologists -- the guys/gals behind the scenes.

maybe, and to check my claim, i wandered over to the pathology forum. I found this thread talking about the projected shortage of pathologists: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=868089

It seemed like I was incorrect in my assumption. But post 10 took a drastic turn from the previous posts in the thread and it went downhill after that. you might be right. I hope so.

 

[Dissected]

maybe, and to check my claim, i wandered over to the pathology forum. I found this thread talking about the projected shortage of pathologists: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=868089

It seemed like I was incorrect in my assumption. But post 10 took a drastic turn from the previous posts in the thread and it went downhill after that. you might be right. I hope so.

Yes, it will be interesting to see

 

[ManBroDude]

Yes, I meant medical examiners, silly me! There's a pathologist nose deep in a microscope in the floor below me as I type this.

 

[Dissected]

Yes, I meant medical examiners, silly me! There's a pathologist nose deep in a microscope in the floor below me as I type this.

Nose deep, lol. That made me laugh.