So, I hear that the summer after your first year is your only real free time. What do you first years have planned? I heard some last year went on a medical mission to Africa or something.
Gotta go back to working full time. I need the health insurance to get some stuff taken care of that I'd rather not wait three years to address. Maybe if I still had good insurance, I would be willing to get the Xanax that I need to talk to RachelD in person.
Okay, so maybe I'll have long since changed my mind by the time I actually am a first year who is about to have my only summer off, but at this point, I intend to try and get into one of their research gigs, where they pay you a couple thousand bucks & you get to put your name on a paper & you get a nice LOR for residency... plus the bonus of getting to do research 😉 ...
The honors research program pays $4500, but the odds that you are going to get your name on a publication from it are not that great depending on what researcher you work with. There is a poster presentation however. I don't know about the LOR's since you'd be working with a PhD. There are also summer programs in pathology and family medicine that offer some compensation.
Oh, I also might be getting married at that time so....
Indeed a very common summer activity... We also have sombody having a baby if everything goes as planned.
another one taken...
OSU's hospital has sort of a bad reputation. The other criticism I've heard about OSU from DOs who trained elsewhere is that OSU is a little insular. Most everyone as OSU supposedly trained at OSU, so you don't have a lot of variety in instruction or style. I'll note that I seriously considered attending an osteopathic school, but I thought there were some osteopathic schools that were more impressive than OSU. Just my opinion,so please don't flame me.
They just changed the name to OSU Medical Center to give it some more prestige. You can get a good education there, but they are state level 3 for trauma. While I realize that these "levels" don't mean much save for marketing purposes, there was a concern when I worked there that their students weren't getting that much trauma exposure.
If I were king, I think that I'd just as well make one degree (call it whatever you want, "doctor" actually comes from "teacher" in latin) since licensure agencies do not distinguish between them.
I never had any interest in osteopathic medicine personally. If I couldn't get into an MD school, I would have just keep reapplying. As exlaw said, it's a year or two of extra preparation vs. a career of explaining what you are and putting yourself behind the 8-ball for consideration in some residency programs. I do know people who set their sites on osteopath and only went that route, and that's great. They are proud of their decision, and I would consider myself priveleged to work with them someday. My original interest in medicine was MD/PhD, so osteopathic medicine was just not in my differential from the get-go.
Treating the whole person? Well that's the doctor's philosophy ultimately. There are plenty of DO surgeons who don't get a full social history before operating, just as there some great MD's who treat holistically. I honestly think that it is a function of stress management, personal values, and experience rather than what school you go to. OMM? It's borne out of the DO philosophy from many decades ago and not a major component of medicine in our country.
As far as the "rankings" go, again, it is a marketing spin. As university politics go, OSU would likely slide down that USN/WR list for primary care in exchange for half of OU's grant revenue. I think that Boren's focus campus-wide is really more geared toward competing with Texas schools, and that's not going to happen by increasing the emphasis here on primary care.
🙁 Sorry if that is offensive. It is not my opinion. Primary care is actually on a short list of residencies that I have not ruled out, but the more competative specialties just have more political pull in the academic setting.
I don't know a girl who doesn't appreciate a compliment from a member of the opposite sex. Especially someone as witty and intelligent as you! We like it so you can keep it up!😉
Now, if I could just get you to talk to me sometime that would be great.😀
I shall make it a goal for 2007.
🙂
