Agree 100%.
As far as your question regarding the attitudes of practicing residents / physicians, one could speak volumes on this topic, as with
many other contentious issues in osteopathic medicine, but I think the themes are consistent.
#1 The average DO is disinterested in the politics of the "osteopathic profession." They are far more concerned with their practice.
#2 There is no gravitational center to the DO identity, but there are two distinct sets of attitudes about the AOA (i.e. the DO mothership) and its policies.
A.One set of attitudes casts the "osteopathic physician" as some kind of special healer with training simultaneously equal to, distinct from, and superior to allopathic physicians. They see the AOA as the advocate and protector of this faith. They see modern DOs as a kind of torch-bearer for patient-centered care through the dark night of modern managed health care.
B. Another set of attitudes sees the AOA and its policies as consistently undermining the essential standards of educational integrity and value, especially in regards to clinical education during the 3rd and 4th years. They see these policies as weakening the legitimacy of the (already tenuous) claim of equivalency of osteopathic and allopathic training.
In the case of RVU, many of us fall into the latter category. There's no knocking of the students, or even the school itself. Rather there is a deep concern about why this policy of accrediting a for-profit school (the first and only for-profit school in the US) was passed, and what effect such a policy will have on the osteopathic medical education system as a whole, especially in regards to our allopathic counterparts, who notably have passed an out-right ban on for-profit medical eduction in the US. These concerns can only be understood in the context of the recent rapid expansion of DO school size and numbers and the subsequent cries of gaps in educational quality or of administrative malfeasance, especially at some recently opened DO schools.
To bring back to the level of the individual pre-med making an individual choice between schools, as a recent graduate, now staring down the barrel of my 200,000+ dollar educational debt which funded my med school adventure, I would say to the DO school shopper: Buyer beware. Carefully consider what you are buying with your 200,000 dollars. Kick the tires. Talk to current owners, graduates. Don't allow your emotional attachments to drive your decision, and don't allow sweet-talking admissions personnel or cherry-picked 1st year med students to lead you down the garden path on a carefully scripted tour of a shiny new Anatomy lab or well-appointed lecture hall.
bth
