I am a Predoctoral OMM Fellow. I am spending an extra year in medical school learning solely OMM. I have office hours & patient responsibilities, research time and taching responsibilities. PCOM and a few other DO schools offer the fellowship. Its become quite competitive at PCOM the last few years.
Learning OMM in the classroom gives you the building blocks necessary to become great at OMM without any additional FORMAL training. But like anything else you need to read, practice and use it regularly to become great.
You can graduate PCOM knowing everything there is to know about Cardiology or Surgery...you need to continue to develop your knowledge base and skill in practice. This starts with 3rd year rotations. I have had several students go into 3rd year with a decent skill level in OMT and come back for their OMM rotation looking like they were an OMM Fellow. They practiced, used it on patients at every opportunity and developed their skills. I have seen other come back to campus with no abilty to do anything at all. They didnt bother to use OMT.
Personally OMT has become important in developing my manual dexterity and hand eye coordination, not to mention my diagnostic abilities. I feel confident in my palpatory skills for just about anything. And just as I will sit with suture material and tie knots for a half hour per night, I treat my friends, family and patients on rotations every chance I get.
That has resulted in me, a senior medical student, developing a 2 month waiting list for patients. Same with the other senior fellows.
Too many patients and not enough people doing OMM. Either because they dont take the time to learn it in the first place or they never kept up their skills. For some its just another class.
