fuegorama said:
A search for dually recognized programs turned up multiple threads on PG training.
Are there any LCME & AOA licensing board combined program schools?
If not, why not?
How could this be changed?
My prophylactic answer to the first response of "why do you want this?" is...I am worried about perceptions of my degree. I feel my school training is at least as rigorous as the majority of allo. programs. I am weary of the self-segregation of the Osteopathic profession. If osteopathy is as great as we tout, then we owe it to ourselves and future patients to incorporate this discipline into more practices. This would include agressive education of future physicians regardless of title.
Well, the short answer to your question is that dual certification is redundant. I think that it would be viewed as a great capitulation to the MD world if DO schools rolled over and sought LCME accreditation. Besides, fundamentally, osteopathic medicine is as much an autonomous profession as it is a social movement. As with any social movements, you have a continuum of beliefs and a more or less "liberal to conservative" gradient of ideology within the movement. Its hard to have a successful social movement when you devalue your own standards.
I am certain that your school's training is at least as good as the majority of allopathic programs and probably better. I think that you're going through a phase of development in osteopathic professional identification and attitude development: I think that for some people, especially those who have never been "attention seekers" or have always more or less "played by the rules" or stuck to the "tried and true" or "straight and narrow" opting for an alternative medical degree (alternative in the sense that it is not the majority "-MD" degree) is scary.
Apply yourself, work hard, learn and become comfortable with OMM and touching patients, and you'll see that things will work out just fine: You'll be just as likely to land your residency of choice as any MD student. It does help to take the USMLE and rotate at big name MD programs if you're interested in competitive ACGME residencies---that's just good professional gamesmanship.
As far as the "self-segregation" thing goes---this is true to various degrees everywhere in all fields. The Ivies self-segregate, Mayo is very provincial, the East Coast programs look down the midwest, the southern/southeastern programs tend to recruit among themselves. I think you'd find this to be true in almost any field. Many older DO's who faced a lot of prejudice in their training days still remember the sting of being denied hospital privileges and licenses and carry those experiences with them. The fact of the matter is that with every passing generation things get better in the osteopathic world---the move toward creating OPTI's, dual certification ACGME/AOA residencies, developing evidence-based manipulative medicine, etc has almost been exclusively driven by younger DO's who trained in a variety of settings and embrace a more "progressive" view of osteopathy.
Try not to stress about this and remember its easier to work for change from within than it is to force it from the outside.
