Less Micro & Pharm at DO?

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Drrrrrr. Celty

Drrrrrr. Celty

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So apparently OMM takes time from microbiology and pharmacology at some DO schools. ( or so was mentioned recently by some DO students )
Is this true? How did you overcome this come boards time since the usmle apparently tests these two more heavily than the comlex?
 
I don't know the answer to your first question, but I can tell you that my pharm and micro lectures covered significantly more material than what was on the usmle and comlex. Additionally, my level 1 comlex exam had way more micro than my usmle step 1.
 
At PNWU I think our pharm curriculum was solid. Micro could have been improved, but we still had the course. I don't think OMT came at the expense of other courses, per se, though at times it seemed very low yield, especially when your time is precious and you'd rather be home studying for other courses. Compound this with the already tepid feeling many students share toward OMT, then you quickly breed discontent for studying it at all.
 
In theory, OMM took away from all of my classes last semester, certainly not just micro and pharm.

I'd say our curriculum for both classes was pretty heavy, especially for micro.
 
What is the source of this claim?

At my school, Pharm and Micro are covered in great detail, to the extent that our students do nicely on COMLEX.


serenade said:
So apparently OMM takes time from microbiology and pharmacology at some DO schools. ( or so was mentioned recently by some DO students )
Is this true? How did you overcome this come boards time since the usmle apparently tests these two more heavily than the comlex?
Click to expand...
 
Not the COMLEX I took. If you don't know your bugs and drugs, you may be in for a rude surprise.
 
I mean, the time spent on OMM has to come from somewhere. My school spends 2-4 hours per week on the stuff. Comparing the USLME pass rates of DO and MD students tells me that the amount of stuff DO's may not get to is extremely insignificant. Or, maybe, some material is covered even faster.

What I can tell you with certainty is that you'll never know 100% because I doubt this is a standardized thing where +1 hour OMM equals -1 hour micro or embryo at every institution.
 
Goro said:
What is the source of this claim?

At my school, Pharm and Micro are covered in great detail, to the extent that our students do nicely on COMLEX.
Click to expand...

GuyWhoDoesStuff said:
This is absolutely the case according to about a half dozen DO students at two different DO schools I speak with on a regular basis. I'm sure different schools balance it differently, but there's definitely a trade off (OMM = less of something else).

They sort of talk about it in a sheepish way, but they also recognize that phrases like "we learn everything MD students do, but then so much more!" is disingenuous. You wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) the things they said were totally skipped over, in Micro and Pharm especially.
Click to expand...

sylvanthus said:
Ya it is bloody irritating, the thing at the end talking about being ordinary (essentially saying MD) or extraordinary (yay DO), is a bit ridiculous. Also, the OMT hours, at least in my experience, are not "extra" they come at the expense of something else. At PNWU this was microbiology. Not a good thing to cut down on.
Click to expand...
 
DO students stay in school longer for omm. They don't lose out on micro or pharmacology.
 
serenade said:
So apparently OMM takes time from microbiology and pharmacology at some DO schools. ( or so was mentioned recently by some DO students )
Is this true? How did you overcome this come boards time since the usmle apparently tests these two more heavily than the comlex?
Click to expand...
I'd love to know how anyone knows how the pharmacology and microbiology at DO schools compares to that of MD schools, or how DO schools compare with one another as to who has how much time to do what.
 
Wrong! There are plenty of bugs and drugs... and apparently COMLEX tests heavy on those.
Biochem is tested heavier on the USMLE than COMLEX... does that mean we receive less in lecture? I don't know, maybe. As a whole though, the extra OMM comes out of time where most MD students are sitting at home looking at their computer screens. Your argument would only be true if we were in school every hour of the day.
 
Mosobio post: 14819494 said:
Wrong! There are plenty of bugs and drugs... and apparently COMLEX tests heavy on those.
Biochem is tested heavier on the USMLE than COMLEX... does that mean we receive less in lecture? I don't know, maybe. As a whole though, the extra OMM comes out of time where most MD students are sitting at home looking at their computer screens. Your argument would only be true if we were in school every hour of the day.
Click to expand...

I had more biochem on the comlex. I literally had no biochem questions on the usmle. I had signifcantly more statistic questions on the usmle, though.
 
For my school, it was more a case of "the time I am in OMM could be better spent studying micro/pharm/etc."
 
I'm going to get flamed for this but here we go.

The data show that the difference between the level of performance on the USMLE between MD's and DO's is insignificant. Therefore, dedicating time to master OMM is a small sacrifice made for a greater gain. Besides, in my opinion, medical schools graduate physicians (aka care givers) they don't graduate bench scientists. The emphasis on spending more time improving one's "doctoring" skills is well justified.

Now I'm ready for some beating. 😀
 
2 things:

  1. I had way too many 4 hour days to think that time was "taken away" from anything to teach us OMM. If we were missing out on some component of pharm or micro (which were the two biggest subjects on my COMLEX-1) I'd have to think we would not have had so many half day's in lecture.
  2. OMM is not a hard subject. If you have any ability to do special manipulation problems in your head you shouldn't struggle. I honestly gave maybe 6 hours total during the first two years to OMM studying, and I pulled A's pretty regularly. I didn't even review OMM for COMLEX beyond memorizing a pair of tables (chapman's points and VSR's), and even that was done two days before my exam.
I just don't buy that OMM comes at the expense if basic sciences, not when my academic year is longer, and I still have one or two 4 hour days per week.
 
cliquesh said:
I had more biochem on the comlex. I literally had no biochem questions on the usmle. I had signifcantly more statistic questions on the usmle, though.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected. And happy to be wrong in this case
 
Ibn Alnafis MD said:
I'm going to get flamed for this but here we go.

The data show that the difference between the level of performance on the USMLE between MD's and DO's is insignificant. Therefore, dedicating time to master OMM is a small sacrifice made for a greater gain. Besides, in my opinion, medical schools graduate physicians (aka care givers) they don't graduate bench scientists. The emphasis on spending more time improving one's "doctoring" skills is well justified.

Now I'm ready for some beating. 😀
Click to expand...

Definitely not trying to start a flame war...
Disclaimer: this doesn't mean there aren't people who are outliers and crush the boards at any school, this is talking about averages and what comes with them

Step 1 national avg: 227
Step 1 national STD dev: 22
Average MD school step 1 is 220-240, it is also above 227 (since the overall mean is 227 with the DO and foreign MD schools are under this)

The first time pass rate nationally is 89% for DO and 94% for MD but it isn't a great comparison since it is a self selected group of DOs vs every MD student forced to take the test. Individual schools vary from 70-100%.

From my interview experiences and data I have available the highest USMLE avg scores at osteopathic schools I've heard of or seen reported were in the 215-219 range. This is from last spring at TCOM, DMU, and AZCOM which are some of the better-best schools. Also, the students taking the exam to generate that average were self selected based on their competitiveness/ambition to take another set of boards and generally were the above average to average students in the class.

This data shows about half a standard deviation in performance between a self selected group of students at some of the best DO schools, including TCOM the one that matches more ACGME than any DO school, and the overly conservative estimate of US MD students.
 
What are your data sources for the DO schools?
 
i have 4 hours of lecture pretty much every morning. for the 1 day a week we have OMM (for a maximum of 2 hours), it is scheduled in the afternoon. meaning it takes away no time from my other classes.
 
TwinsFan said:
...Step 1 national avg: 227
Step 1 national STD dev: 22
Average MD school step 1 is 220-240, it is also above 227 (since the overall mean is 227 with the DO and foreign MD schools are under this)
Click to expand...

You should probably have a citation for claims like this. It's risky to assume that this "self selected group of the better performing DO students" who takes the USMLE is contributing significantly to dragging down the average score.

A couple points:

How do you know that the USMD average is higher than 227 for 2013? Do you have a source for that or is it an assumption on your part? Do you also have an average DO USMLE 2013 score somewhere that you've seen published?

From the data published at http://www.usmle.org/performance-data/default.aspx#2012_step-1 it looks like in 2012 the first time pass rate for DO's was 92% and for MD's 96%. 2nd time pass rate was identical for both groups.

Additionally there were a total of 18,723 USMD students who took the 2012 exam for the first time, and 2,496 USDO first time taker.

There were 14,201 first time international student examinees, and they passed at a rate of 76%.

So 2,496 students who passed on their first attempt at a rate of 92%, vs. 14,201 who passed at a rate of 76%. Which group do you think likely contributed more to "dragging down the average"? And that's assuming that the averages aren't similar between US trained students.

While I'd like to see some real data, I'd be willing to be the average USMLE score between DO students and USMD students isn't as different as you think it is.
 
This was from the deans and adcoms on interview days from last years classes at all these schools I interviewed at. They don't publish it but they gave it when I asked on interview day (they do publish pass rates in their app materials).

Also the pass rates I used were from 2013 per the handout at dmu.
 
TwinsFan said:
This was from the deans and adcoms on interview days from last years classes at all these schools I interviewed at. They don't publish it but they gave it when I asked on interview day (they do publish pass rates in their app materials).

Also the pass rates I used were from 2013 per the handout at dmu.
Click to expand...

So I wonder if DMU's USMLE pass rate is lower than the overall pass rate for DO's or if the overall rate went down in 2013?
 
Those pass rates (89 and 94) are overall for DO and MD in 2013.
DMU's pass rate is 91.2% for 2013 per the handout (it was higher several years prior).

Also, what I'm saying is that the US DO average step 1 is about 215 for the self selected test takers, as is evident from the averages taken at 3 of the better schools (over 10% of the DOs who took the exam and a pretty good sample size). Not that this drags the overall average down much based on the quantity taking the exam vs US and foreign MD. I think it is conservative to assume the US MD average is only 227 (it is probably a point or two higher) since many school's average are above this and at least one group of the examinees is below. And the difference of 1/2 a standard deviation or more is significant and something to consider when deciding on schools.

As for a citation on who takes the USMLE at osteopathic schools this seems a bit unnecessary. It is an optional extra board exam taken to land more desirable (on average) ACGME residencies. From the schools I've visited and those I've spoken to (several dozen students) the bottom of the barrel of the class skips out on taking it and generally only the average to above average pursue the more competitive residency options in the ACGME that require a USMLE score (some less competitive programs do not require the score) thus they are not in the discussion. At DMU only 45-70 people per year take it, to give a rough idea and this is per data given at the interview.

There is no data I know of about US born foreign MD, but I would guess they are the lowest average based on their match rates, with foreign born foreign MDs being higher due to some influx of prestigious international grads (Oxford etc.) bringing there averages up.


When I was looking to apply there was no data on this at all. That is why at every school I interviewed at I made sure to inquire and find out for myself. Now I'm trying to pass it on so people can be informed as possible.
Does a higher board score mean you'll be a better doctor?... No
Does a higher board score mean you'll have an easier chance at the residency you want?...
Yes, and that's the #1 reason it matters, because we all would like to match in our own fields and locations of interest
 
TwinsFan said:
Those pass rates (89 and 94) are overall for DO and MD in 2013.
DMU's pass rate is 91.2% for 2013 per the handout (it was higher several years prior).
Click to expand...

I'm wondering where you got this info, because I can't find 2013 data anywhere (especially since a year's data usually includes tests taken out through feb of the following year ie. tests that are taken this month and next are still part of the 2013 data set). This is the citation I'm looking for. I don't trust materials from ADCOM's because trumping up their school at the expense of others is the name of the game.

I don't doubt that the averages are not identical, but I don't think the difference is that big. I am willing to be proven wrong with some official USMLE published data.
 
Embryo is missing from many DO curriculums. Embryo is also not really tested on the USMLE.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Embryology was lacking at my school. It was included in Histology.
 
TwinsFan said:
Those pass rates (89 and 94) are overall for DO and MD in 2013.
DMU's pass rate is 91.2% for 2013 per the handout (it was higher several years prior).

Also, what I'm saying is that the US DO average step 1 is about 215 for the self selected test takers, as is evident from the averages taken at 3 of the better schools (over 10% of the DOs who took the exam and a pretty good sample size). Not that this drags the overall average down much based on the quantity taking the exam vs US and foreign MD. I think it is conservative to assume the US MD average is only 227 (it is probably a point or two higher) since many school's average are above this and at least one group of the examinees is below. And the difference of 1/2 a standard deviation or more is significant and something to consider when deciding on schools.

As for a citation on who takes the USMLE at osteopathic schools this seems a bit unnecessary. It is an optional extra board exam taken to land more desirable (on average) ACGME residencies. From the schools I've visited and those I've spoken to (several dozen students) the bottom of the barrel of the class skips out on taking it and generally only the average to above average pursue the more competitive residency options in the ACGME that require a USMLE score (some less competitive programs do not require the score) thus they are not in the discussion. At DMU only 45-70 people per year take it, to give a rough idea and this is per data given at the interview.

There is no data I know of about US born foreign MD, but I would guess they are the lowest average based on their match rates, with foreign born foreign MDs being higher due to some influx of prestigious international grads (Oxford etc.) bringing there averages up.


When I was looking to apply there was no data on this at all. That is why at every school I interviewed at I made sure to inquire and find out for myself. Now I'm trying to pass it on so people can be informed as possible.
Does a higher board score mean you'll be a better doctor?... No
Does a higher board score mean you'll have an easier chance at the residency you want?...
Yes, and that's the #1 reason it matters, because we all would like to match in our own fields and locations of interest
Click to expand...
MDs were often better students with fewer non-academic responsibilities than DO students to begin with. Couple this with the fact that DO schools prepare you for the COMLEX rather than the USMLE. What I'm saying is, if you had good grades and a good MCAT, and focus your efforts on the USMLE rather than primarily the COMLEX, you will probably score just as well as an equally qualified MD applicant on the Steps. It isn't that the education is subpar, it is that you have two groups of students that were selected based on different criteria to begin with.

If you do not do well on the boards, it is certainly not the fault of your medical school. Your results are an expression of your own ability and effort. If you'd gone to Harvard, your scores would probably be the same, a fact that was reflected in your prior MCAT, GPA, extracurrics, etc that led to you not being chosen to go there in the first place.

The DO students of today have great numbers. Most of them would have been MDs had they been born 15 years earlier. But with a larger pool of applicants, you end up with a greater number of outliers- the people that take to learning easily, that can crush standardized tests without effort, that never seem to run out of energy and ambition with which to push their goals further. This leads to more outliers filling the MD seats, and thus producing board scores that are historically just plain crazy high. 227 used to be a top notch score that would get you in just about anywhere; now it's average. DOs tend to be more on the high end of average of the curve for MCAT and GPA- they're great, but not crazy outliers. So you've got a group of people that are in the top 20% (31 MCAT) in aptitude competing with a group that are composed of a mix of the top 43% (27 MCAT).

tl;dr the differences in board scores are likely related to the average student aptitude difference between DO and MD schools and lack of focus on the USMLE, not the education itself.
 
This is flat out not true. If there is anything missing at my school its memorizing some aspects of Biochem, but the truth is that they teach us all of it, we're just not always tested on it. That really comes down to whether or not you do the work though. You will never be tested on everything, so a lot of board prep is on you to make sure you don't have many more gaps in your knowledge than the average med student.

I know here though that Pharm and Micro are HUGE.
 
To be honest, you really should not be worrying about this at this point. The focus should be to get into school. If you like DO and the philosophy behind what we do, go DO. But if you are going DO because you think it is easier or different, think again.
Every school is different and every board exam is different. Pharmacology is definitely not lacking in my DO curriculum, nor is micro, especially given the fact that micro is not a huge part of step one. Worry about the micro on Step 3 of Infectious Disease. Trust the fact that no matter where you go will prep you well for boards. But as far as worrying about that now... don't. It is too early to stress about board exams before you're even in school.
 
My school has the IU school of medicine faculty and physicians teaching our neuroscience block right now. From what I understood in speaking with the course director, we are getting the exact same curriculum as the MD students only in 6 weeks vs the 8 that it is taught at IU.
 
Longer school year allows for ALL material to be taught (including OMT).

Also, medical education is quite standardized, and it must be so. Since there aren't enough AOA residency spots for the 6000+ graduates annually, they have to ensure that new DO's are up to snuff on the material presented not just on COMLEX, but also USMLE, so that they can obtain ACGME spots.

Or I guess one could argue the reverse: AOA does not increase the number of spots since they expect a percentage of graduates to pursue ACGME spots, but I digress.
 
818DOctor2B said:
Since there aren't enough AOA residency spots for the 6000+ graduates annually, they have to ensure that new DO's are up to snuff on the material presented not just on COMLEX, but also USMLE, so that they can obtain ACGME spots.
Click to expand...
They don't have to since no DO school requires passing the USMLE to pass medical school (and if there is a DO school that does this, please correct me). Despite that, I'd say a number of DO schools do teach to a level that would give you the necessary knowledge to pass the USMLE (my school being one of them).
 
Tizoc said:
...Despite that, I'd say a number of DO schools do teach to a level that would give you the necessary knowledge to pass the USMLE (my school being one of them).
Click to expand...

All schools will teach you enough to pass USMLE. But not all students will learn enough to pass USMLE or even COMLEX.
 
SLC said:
All schools will teach you enough to pass USMLE. But not all students will learn enough to pass USMLE or even COMLEX.
Click to expand...

Well, that's why both MD/DO's-to-be take at least a month off to study before the exam... No one learns purely from school how to do well on USMLE/COMLEX. What you put in yourself is what you get.
 
MerickManual said:
Well, that's why both MD/DO's-to-be take at least a month off to study before the exam... No one learns purely from school how to do well on USMLE/COMLEX. What you put in yourself is what you get.
Click to expand...
You might not learn how to do well, but you will learn the material that's tested at every single medical school in the country.
 
MerickManual said:
Well, that's why both MD/DO's-to-be take at least a month off to study before the exam... No one learns purely from school how to do well on USMLE/COMLEX. What you put in yourself is what you get.
Click to expand...

My school gives us docs-to-be 2-3 weeks off to study before the exam. That means we're smarter, right, right... ... ... ...
 
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