"ranking" osteopathic medical schools?

[fmfcorpsman]

It is easy to learn about the differences between various MD schools. What I am interested is in the differences between various DO schools. I have applied to Kansas City and Des Moines. If anyone can offer some commentary on either of these schools or other DO schools in general it would be appreciated. I am interested in quality of education, rotations, and any other topic you may find interesting.

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[J143]

go to www.interviewfeedback.com

they've got great info on people's interview experiences

good luck!

 

[Kent Ray]

fmfcorpsman,
I am a fourth year medical student from Des Moines. We get an excellent education in our first two years. Your first year at Des Moines you take all the basic sciences that most schools take in two years. The second consists of a system approach. This is very good. Also, we are one of the best schools for training in osteopathy (Kirksville is also good, Michigan is bad). The second two years are not as good. You have a 4mo FP rotation in your third year which has the potential to be good depending on what Dr. you are with. You also have a 4mo Hospital core which are usually good. The rest of the rotations you can set up with any old Dr. This is bad!
I will give you some advice now. When you go out on your rotations do all your rotations at a teaching hospital (other than your FP core). If you don't your education will be poor.
I have a friend at the KC school. I believe their rotations are the same as ours.
If I were you I would go to Des Moines (if you only had the two to choose from). Our President is very good and has changed many things with our school. He is a past Dean at Tuffs and a former Dean of one of the departments at Harvard.
If you have any other questions please email me [email protected]

 

[fmfcorpsman]

Kent Ray,

Thanks for the info that was exactly the type of information that I was looking for. With regard to the rotations that you set up yourself, are you entirely responsible for contacting physicians and organizing the rotation?

 

[Kent Ray]

fmfcorpsman,
If you do a rotations with a private physician that does't have ties to the school you will be resbonsible for contacting them. If you do your rotations through a teaching hospital the medical education department will set them up. Again, you should do all your rotations through some teaching hospital!

 

[hankhill]

I interviewed at both UHS and DMU, and I liked DMU better. Both schools seem to be good though. I liked the area of the DMU campus much better than the area of UHS's campus. However, UHS has an incredibly nice facility. Just a bad neighborhood. Students stated that their were nice places to live within a short driving distance to UHS. At the DMU campus, you wouldn't be concerned about walking off of the campus, however at UHS its a different story. Price is another consideration. I believe that DMU is a few thousand cheaper/year than UHS in tuition. Its not a lot, but every little bit helps when you are paying over $20K/year just in tuition. Then again, UHS had an anatomy lab that you would love to have a super bowl party at LOL. Enormous TV's spaced all around the room so that everyone had a good view of demonstrations. I think that the quality of education at the two programs is probably about equal. Go check out both of the schools for yourself. They are worthy of your time. Good luck.

 

[fmfcorpsman]

Thanks for the info Hank.


Kent-- What is the cost of housing in the area around Des Moines? Do you have to leave the state during your rotations? If you did for how long were you away?

Keep the comments coming they are appreciated.

 

[Kent Ray]

fmfcorpsman,
The cost of living in Des Moines is fair. Their are moderate to very nice apparments surrounding the school. Many people lived in "3000 Grand" right accross the street from the Tower Clinic. These are more expensive, but very nice. There are also apparments to the north of the school on the other side of Grand ave. I lived on 31st street in a house my first year. My friend bought the house and charged 300/mo. My second year I lived in a duplex about a mile away that was even nicer. I had a roommate and we paid about 280/mo each. Don't worry, look in the paper, walk around the campus and look at the various appartment complexes. It all depends if you want to live close to the school or not. Look on the schools web site under student services and see what the school can help you with.
By my choice I was out of the state for about 16 mo out of my third and fourth years. Out of this time I only paid rent for four months. Many hospitals will put you up in an appartment while you do rotations with them if you are not married. In my third year my core family practice was in a small town in north east Iowa, Manchester. This was a great rotation. I worked in the ER, Surger, delivered babies, and got to know many of the patients. The hospital also gave me a room to stay in while I was there.
By the time you are ready to do rotations their will be much more opportunity to do rotations in Iowa. The school is in the process of forming an alliance with Mercy. This is a tertiary hospital in Des Moines with >1000 beds. I went out of state because at that time their were not many structured quality rotations at teaching hospitals in Iowa. This is changing and should be much different for you. Our school is also joining with COGMET as partners with undergraduate medical education. We have had a long standing relationship with MSUCOM and Ohio's "Core" for several years.
If you look at the more successful schools they have a broad base of support from the community and allumni. In our recent past this was our weakness. It is the schools main priorty these days to form local and state alliences. They are also greatly improving the allumni relations.
The school is forming alliences with Iowa state university, Drake university, and others in the state. The specifics, I don't know!

Kent

 

[Deb]

Here is a list of the rotations required by UHS.

3rd yr: 10 months
2 FM, 2 General IM, OB/GYN, Peds, Surgery, Psychiatry,
1 specialty (your choice), 1 primary care (your choice
of FM, Peds, OB/GYN, Psych, OMT, and a few others).

4th yr: 10 months
Emergency Medicine, Critical Care, Cardiology, 3 FM (or
you may do 1 FM and 2 subspecialties), 4 electives.

This rotations schedule is new (starting with the class
of 2001). Hope this info helps.

Deb UHS-01

 

[fmfcorpsman]

Thanks for all the great info!!

 

[asta]

Any info on Touro University in Vallejo? It's relatively new, but wanted to see what your thoughts on it are.

much thanks in advance.
A

 

[turtleboard]

So in your third year at UHS, you're only given a month (of 10) that has nothing to do with primary care?

And in your fourth year, where you list 3FM or 1FM and 2 subspecialties, is that subspecialties in FM or any subspecialty (IM Subspecialty, Surgical subspecialty)?

Is a sub-I required in the fourth year?


Tim of New York City.

 

[Deb]

Tim,

During the third yr there two are nonprimary care rotations, surgery and the specialty
month. However, with the primary care month they've been pretty flexible. I've heard
of people doing everything from Derm to Infectious Disease. So you could say there
are really three nonprimary care rotations. In the fourth yr the "3 FM or 1 FM and 2
subspecialties" allows ANY specialties/subspecialties including IM/Surgical. Don't
forget though, we do get 4 months of electives.

We are not required to do a Sub-I during the fourth year. Could you please explain
exactly what that entails and any pros/cons? Although it's not required if it's
something that might help with residency placement I'd like to know more.

Thanks,
Deb

 

[turtleboard]

Deb,

A sub-I is a subinternship. Subinternships are generally a month long and allow the MS4 to practice on the level of interns/house staff with all the stuff that goes along with it.

There are all sorts of sub-Is, and not every school offers them. At my school there is currently only a medical and surgical sub-I. Doing a sub-I will help with residency placement because it shows the responsibility you are capable of, and it shows that you can handle the work.

If you're headed into a surgical residency, you'd want to do a surgical sub-I to show off your talent as a would-be intern on a surgical service. If you were going down the medicine road (FP, IM, Peds, etc.), you'd want to do a medicine sub-I to show you're capable of handling the hours, demands, and work-load of a medicine intern.

I'm not sure what, if any, the cons would be in doing a sub-I. Perhaps other students can answer, but if it were left to me, I don't think there'd be anything bad about doing a sub-I.


Tim of New York City.

 

[fmfcorpsman]

Is it true that after four years of education and only one year of an internship DOs can become board certified and set up a full practice in family practice medicine. Am I reading this right on their website?

 

[UHS03]

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong, but here is how I thought things worked: Any doc can be licensed to practice after passing all 3 steps of the boards (COMLEX or USMLE) This does not mean they are board certified, which only comes after completing a residency. The doc who does not do a residency I believe would be considered a general practicioner, whereas it requires a full 3 year family practice residency in order to be board certified by the college of family practcioners (MD or DO). Is this right? What I said about being a GP may be wrong, but I know docs can enter practice after passing the boards..hence the ability of some residents to moonlight in ER's

[This message has been edited by UHS03 (edited 03-06-2000).]

 

[RBorhani]

No you are wrong. It used to (many years ago) be that both MDs and DOs could realistically set up their own practice after one year of postgraduate training. Many old time DOs and MDs who are practicing family medicine have done just that. But those days are over. If you want to be a FP you have to complete a residency both as a DO or MD and FP residencies are between 3-4 years after med school. You still can, in most States, obtain your medical license to practice either as a MD or DO after your internship year (year one of your postgraduate training after medical school) and passing steps I, II and III of either USMLE or COMLEX (that is how we can moonlight as residents) but realize that nowadays no insurance company will pick you up and no hospital will give you practice/admitting privileges if you are not board certified/eligible (i.e. residency trained) in your specialty thus impeding your ability to work independently as a physician if you have not done a complete residency.

[This message has been edited by RBorhani (edited 03-06-2000).]

 

[RBorhani]

SUB-I

Sub-Is are not necessarily "subinternship". I have done 4 sub-I rotations as a 4th year student. When they say Sub-I, most hospitals and schools are referring to subspecialties within a general category such as Internal medicine subspecialties: cardiology, nephrology, pulmonary medicine, or surgery subspecialties: trauma surgery, cardiovascular surgery, etc. When you do one of these subspecialties you will be required to work more like an intern than a med student but you will still be a med student. The only time this is different is if you do a Sub-I in general internal medicine in which case you will work like an intern. During this rotation you will be given your own patient load and once your senior resident is comfortable with your performance you get to write your own orders on all your patients and you will get the first call from the nurses on your patients. However, because of the Medicare laws and because attending physicians generally don?t like lawsuits, a resident or an intern still needs to cosign all your orders before the day is over. But you will get the experience of being paged 100000 times per day and having to go through tons of reference material in a minute in order to figure out what orders to write.... And you will get the pleasure of dictating admit orders and discharge summaries. I had a blast during my sub-I internal medicine rotation.

 

[turtleboard]

That was my point, but not as clear.

Tim of New York City.