Here is RVU's letter to Dr Mychaski and my own personal feelings:
DOAnes
Well, George Mychaskiw, D.O., FAAP
Re: Rocky Vista Univ COM
Since no one has seen fit to stop this endless character assassination, vitriolic innuendoes, out-right false misrepresentations and wailing of poorly or totally uninformed premedical, medical, osteopathic and you, sir, as the only physician doing your level best to be an unrelenting alarmist and whip these students or potential students into a paranoid frenzy, I would suppose it is both right and appropriate for me to be allowed to make a few statements.
As far as I can tell, Dr. Mychaskiw, you are a DO at an allopathic academic health center who is good friends with "a former President of the AMA", have more than a few close friends as "deans" who you allude to and, it's not very clear, but they appear to be at both osteopathic and allopathic institutions. You report having talked to many of these highly placed and influential medical personages all of whom, you say, share your deep concerns and vast alarm. You must truly be highly respected and possess utterly impressive gravitas to have so many friends in high places.
Dr Mychaskiw has had previous editorial letters appearing in the JAOA. He is very concerned about the direction of the osteopathic profession. And I do recall one editorial in particular several years ago where he was concerned with the quality controle at our GMEs and also our board certification processes for specific medical speacialties.
I must confess that my sympathy is with Dr Mychaski - he has repeatedly made his views known on the AOA President's blog by Dr Peter Aljuni - and there has been a very interesting three way discussion between Dr Mychaski and Dr Ajluni and Dr Ronnie of RVU.
In those discussions on the AOA blog - I have noticed that there has been a lot of suspicion - some of it very fair and some of it not so fair - about the nature of RVU. I must confess that I personally feel that the latest expansion of AOA schools and the lack of residencies puts many medical students in jeopardy. Add to this a, profit school, and now many people are wondering a great deal about their future. It is only rational that people be concerned for their own carreer and profession as a DO. This is medicine we are talking about - not a bussiness. If the general public where to realize that there were a several for profit medical schools opening up in the country, do you not think that Congress will redo the 1911 Flexner report? The Flexner report was almost 100 years ago - but I think it might not be a good idea to dismiss it as rubbage.
Those of you interested in this should visit the AOA Presiden't opinion blog.
http://blogs.do-online.org/aoapresident.php?itemid=2994&catid=15#c
Dr. Mychaskiw, you should come out to Colorado and be the professional watchdog, an Inspector-General if you would, at Rocky Vista. I am truly puzzled that you ply your craft at an allopathic institution when you could be lending your doubtlessly impeccable clinical skills to an osteopathic institution, so that, as you practice anesthesiology, you might additionally function as an ever-vigilant monitor in your campaign to govern and regulate, to your satisfaction that institution and, of course, RVUCOM, and other osteopathic institutions, including those that have, fairly recently, "sprung up".
Dr Mychaskiw has raised issue with the quality control in our GMEs in the past. It is only natural that if he is concerned about our GMEs that he also be concerned about our medical schools. The head is not seperated from the foot. To state that "you ply your craft at an allopathic institution" suggest to me that you look down on allopathic medicine.
I personally have a great deal of respect for allopathic students and MD physicians. With this in mind we need more DOs out in the allopathic world to get our point across. We have a philosophy and additional training that we can bring to help patients. Now would you rather we squander that talent and keep it to ourselves?
No, we should be sharing that talent and showing others what it can do. Let me borrow a religious analogy - we should spread "the word" so to speak. Missionary activity. And while we're at it, let's listen to what the allopaths have to offer to patients as well.
Yet how can we spread "the word" if our own house is not built on a foundation of rock.
THAT is what all these comments on SDN and the AOA President's blog are all about. May I suggest to you that you change RVU into a non-profit institution rather than dragging down the entire osteopathic profession.
You have attacked virtually everyone I can think of in what I consider your uniformed and callous rages against RVUCOM, the AOA, including its BOT, COCA, unspecified Caribbean schools, the faculty at RVUCOM ((do you know any of them?), in your campaign for the future of osteopathic medicine which, as you seem to characterize it, is imminently and irrevocably plunging off a cliff. You endlessly churn what you seem to delineate as quite real and the ‘truth'; then level charges and characterizations which could, quite fairly, be labeled as character assassination and libel.
How can I state this with any certainty? I am Associate Dean of Biomedical Sciences at Rocky Vista, and, unlike you, Dr. Mychaskiw, I do know the facts and what is happening at Rocky Vista.
I am sorry to use this analogy, but I will: There's a reason why the Japanese auto manufactures out did us in the 90s and today our own domestic auto manufacturing groups in Detroit are struggling. It is called
QUALITY CONTROL.
People are worried about quality. If all we do is turn out lack lusters DOs, what will that say about our profession? So when there's a for profit medical school about to open up - what does that say about our profession? We are talking about making doctors now - not making cars. There should be stringent regulations on the schools that train DOs.
Does the AOA have any control? According to some of the AOA blogs, the answer is no. The control belongs to COCA. Yet we have minimal control over COCA - and the amount of resources needed to open an osteopathic program is miniscule compared to an LCME one. The standards are simply lower - low enough that medicine can be taught not with the care of patients as the bottom line - but profits.
That concerns me a great deal.
I will not attempt to answer every point you have raised, Dr. Mychaskiw because frankly, in my opinion, they are so rambling, vitriolic and misinformed that there is no logical place to start. It would be a useless exercise. However what I will do is invite you, here and now, to come to my office - sit down and look me in the face. I would be glad to have any discussion with you that you might like.
Let me tell you my background, Dr. Mychaskiw, so that you may see that I am clearly a misguided and besotted soul who is somehow involved in chicanery, very likely profit-based money grubbing and,
Well, if you do not want to defend your self and your for profit institution, then that suggest to me you have folded to Dr Mychaskiw's arguments. And after reading this on SDN and on the President's AOA blog, I must admit that I have a great deal of difficulty believing you or Dr Ronnie on the AOA blog.
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it almost goes without saying from your allegations, a poorly-prepared educator -who may well be among those that you allude are likely flooding in from the Caribbean.
Following high school in the Midwest, I joined the Army and became a Special Forces soldier who spent a year in open and covert operations in Vietnam. I was trained as a medic and weapons expert in Special Forces. My best friend from those Army days was the longest-serving Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Detail, served under four Presidents and ultimately became Director of the United States Secret Service. If you would like for him to send you a letter of reference concerning me, that could doubtlessly be arranged. You are clearly a man who needs to be reassured, and, in my opinion, probably medicated.
Dr Mychaskiw has made himself known in the past. Several years before I heard about the formation of RVUCOM. To suggest that he needs to be "medicated" displays a large amount of immaturity. I saw some nasty posts from both sides on the AOA blog - but I guess SDN is one step above that of the AOA blog.
Following that, I attended a fully accredited (American) University and what was then the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine. I spent many active duty periods as an HPSP student at numerous Army hospitals and Medical Centers including Brooke AMC, Fitzsimons AMC and Walter Reed. I re-entered the US Army, did a rotating internship and was the first DO to take a pathology residency at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. After I became Chief Resident, they accepted other DO's in the program.
Directly out of my residency, I was named Chief of Anatomic Pathology at what was then Landstuhl Army Medical Center. It is now Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, on the hill just above Ramstein Air Force Base – US Air Force Europe, Headquarters. Landstuhl was then, as it is now, the military's largest (and referral) medical center outside the continental United States.
I returned to the US to become Chief of Surgical Pathology and pathology residency program director at Brooke Army Medical Center. As I recall, only one of my residents was a DO.
I left active duty to accept the position as Chairman of Pathology at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine – the medical school for the University of North Texas Health Science Center. During my twenty years as chairman, we built the largest academic/forensic DNA laboratory in the country and, apparently, the only academic laboratory of that type to be on-line with CODIS (the Combined DNA Indexing System) with the FBI, and worked closely with Texas DPS, the Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I practiced surgical and forensic pathology for many years. I also was the single most prolific teacher at TCOM, responsible for teaching-learning formats in multiple foundational and system courses. In addition to being Chairman of the Department of Pathology and the Center for Human Identification, I became Associate Dean of Medical Education and was instrumental in revamping the TCOM curriculum especially focusing upon innovative techniques in active, adult learning for life-long learners – physicians. Student Board scores improved markedly. My former TCOM students reading this will know who I am.
These, sir, are all very good credentials. If this is true -
then why are you opening a for profit medical school in the first place? I would imagine that with such military credentials you could convice the military to support an osteopathic program. There are many DOs in the military and you would garner much support - so why a private for profit school? I have spoken to several US Army personel (enlisted personel) who are now DO students. I think that says that we're making a huge help for the men and women in uniform.
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I also believe those same students, and, literally, thousands of graduates know that I give you a succinct personal history not for self-aggrandizement, Dr. Mychaskiw, but for your evaluation and likely conclusion that my background implies a naïve, unprepared physician of little integrity who is easily taken in by unscrupulous people. This must be a vast conspiracy by those who have both begun RVUCOM and those who accredit the institution, for no other reason than to figuratively and financially rape students and destroy the credibility of the osteopathic profession.
Please come to Colorado, Dr. Mychaskiw and monitor me, the nascent school, the 150,000sq ft building that is going up as Phase I of the campus, and all of the degrading and indefensible things that are, in your characterizations, occurring here – aided and abetted apparently by the Board of Trustees of the AOA. Only you, evidently, have the moral integrity and incredible insight, from afar, to both know exactly what is wrong, and to set things right here.
For students and others reading these posts, the "massive" opposition to Rocky Vista is being stoked primarily by one individual and exists almost exclusively on studentdoctor.net – net hysteria inflamed by his vitriolic crusade. I won't be responding here but how soon can you come to Colorado, Dr. Mychaskiw?
I suggest that you visit the AOA blog concerning your school.
It had many similar in tone and nature comments that you see here on SDN.
And it's not just Dr Mychaskiw who is concerned. May I suggest to you to change the charter of your school from a for profit instutuion to a non-profit one. This is medicine, not a bussiness.
Am I close? I think I have to be... I don't see any other reason for an associate dean or whatever to publicly become involved in such shenanigans (didn't even use a thesaurus bro).
