exlawgrrl said:
my hope is that the do degree itself won't become devalued. however, i can see where it will become increasingly important where you went to school. my hunch is that there will be more distinguishing between older more established schools and newer schools, which is actually pretty similar to the caribbean and law schools for that matter.
Yeah, that's true. I know that for law school, the reputation of your school is so so so important. However, I do not want people to start equating DO schools with the attitude that 'anyone will get in'. While that in of itself is not bad, the perception (my fear) is that residency directors and/or general public will start discriminating DOs for fear that one of us may have gone to a 'bad' DO school. Right now, people trust that a med school in the US will produced doctors who will be licensed and will become good, practicing physicians (for the most part). If there is an uncontrolled proliferation of DO schools with no thought to how to fill the school with qualified applicants, we will see that attitude change negatively.
😱
it is simple supply and demand. I am not afraid of this competition, are you?
I don't mind competition, in fact, I think our medical school system artificially maintains a limited supply to ensure job options for doctors----physicians are in essence, controlling their own job market by severely regulating the number of people that can enter the profession. If every profession did that, our economy would not be nearly as dynamic or innovative as it is right now. So yes, competition is a good thing.
However (and this is perhaps motivated by a bit of selfishness), I am afraid the DO degree would be equated with subpar candidates. That people, (especially program directors) will think a DO student is someone who probably got in with the minimal specs (since some would have). This will (I fear) create an (extra) stigma and I do not want when I'm looking for a job.
All this is just conjecture, but I don't want to have to 'do better' or fight an uphill battle just to be considered on equal basis with the next guy simply because another school also offered the DO degree to someone who failed organic (and never made up for it). Thus far, studies have shown no difference in quality of care of DOs and MDs, but we will reach a certain point where reaching for the bottom of the barrel also means creating poor physicians.
I advocate expanding DO schools, I advocated opening up more spaces in MD schools. What I don't want is a proliteration of schools that negate quality, that starts accepting students who partied throughout college and decided to take MCAT on a whim, and then go to med school. I don't want to see students coming out with 160k debt but no residency spot because there are so many students out and their poor study habits continued into med school that their low scores prevented them from matching at all. I think schools (and the AOA) have a responsibility to ensure that their students do well enough to get licensed. They are producing
practicing physicians, not just kids with a medical degree. Expansion means doing so responsibly. It means ensuring that students that go in will come out, and that when they come out they will get a residency
somewhere. Otherwise, we are no better than diploma mills. And my degree---even though I am planning on attending a good DO school---will also become associated with such diploma mills.
