Ross/SGU vs DO school

[islanddreams]

I know there are other threads on this, but is it really worth it to go DO? My concern is the title, DO as opposed to MD. Besides residencies, there is lots of prejudice from patients against DOs. When patients go online to search for a pcp or specialist, a lot of them choose MD because it's what is familiar. Is there anyone who has experience with this?

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[Skip Intro]

I used to work with a DO orthopedic surgeon. He had a line out his door. He did partial knees, total knees, shoulders, and hips. No one ever questioned his training or ability.

-Skip

 

[MerickManual]

No. It's 2014 dude. I've even had patients tell me they prefer DOs, if you can wrap your head around that.

 

[islanddreams]

Thank you

 

[islanddreams]

No. It's 2014 dude. I've even had patients tell me they prefer DOs, if you can wrap your head around that.

Where are you located?

 

[kinzav]

I'm around northern Virginia and I've had some say they prefer DO's over MD's. Which is BS. The average patient has a sample size of maybe 2 to 4 physicians? Making a judgement off of that, some internet sleuthing, and their (at no fault of their own) scarcely-informed perception of medicine is not good practice. The training is nearly identical between DO's and MD's, and they should be judged on their manor and ability to treat effectively, not on their "letters". As far as Caribbean goes, if you want to practice in the Caribbean it is a good option, but if you're interested in US residencies it would be safer to choose a DO program (if possible). US MD would provide the least barriers to US residencies, followed by DO, followed by Caribbean but a student in any of these programs can get to where they want with hard work.

 

[Skip Intro]

Yes, I agree with kinzav.

A lot of patients, after consulting with "Dr. Google", somehow come to believe that DO's are inherently more "holistic" in their approach to medicine, and that appeals to them on some fundamental level. The truth is that a lot of DOs could not possibly care less about holistic medicine or their additional training in OMM. Once they complete their requirements in school, they never practice it again for the entirety of their careers. (At this point, I'd argue that it's probably the majority of them.) However, they've seem to have marketed this "holistic" approach pretty well when the fact of the matter is that the training is, for all intents and purposes, otherwise identical with regards to medicine.

-Skip

 

[whizplusdum]

The more I look at SDN, the more I realize this DO vs MD is irrelevant. Most patients do not care where you graduated from, as long as you know what you are doing. So for people who pass judgement on Caribbean MD, US MD and US DO. They should stop believing that they are better than the others. You graduated from Medical school, you did residency with each other, and you now practice medicine TOGETHER!
Do not believe everything you hear and read on SDN. The more I read on SDN, the more I realize that Pre-med and med students believe that USMD >USDO> Carb MD, which is not true. Majority of the residency and physicians have concluded that it does not matter where you graduated from, unless you are in the top 10 percent of USMD schools (UCSF, John Hopkins, Stanford, and etc) either you know what your doing or not.

So when you compare about USDO vs Carb MD, it is based on the individual. How hard you are willing to work!

 

[Skip Intro]

Most patients do not care where you graduated from

Most patients don't ask. Seriously.

-Skip

 

[premed1001]

how is situation for IMG's in 5 years?

 

[ChrisGriffen]

how is situation for IMG's in 5 years?

It gets harder every year for IMGs. Nobody knows what will happen in 5 years, but in that time there are 10 new US medical schools projected to open up.

It is very reasonable to assume that with 10 more classes of US grads to compete with, IMGs are going to have a significantly tougher time finding residencies.

 

[Skip Intro]

Define IMGs.

If you mean by IMGs, traditional IMGs who went to a school in Europe or India, are foreign nationals, and require a J-1 or H-1b visa, then I'd say that the situation has always been tough. And, yes, it's going to get tougher.

If you mean IMGs as in U.S. citizens who got their education abroad (either Caribbean or elsewhere), I think that is a slightly different story. There are going to be far more schools open in the U.S., as Chris Griffen alludes to, which means that there will be far more spots available for those "near misses" who didn't quite get into medical school in the U.S. These are usually the students who do quite well at Caribbean programs and "make the grade" (so to speak) and get into U.S. residency afterwards without a problem. There has been a concentration of states where this has occurred in the past, and these matriculants will have more opportunity to get into a U.S. program.

What will be left-over will be the students who, even now, struggle at Caribbean schools. Yes, programs will still exist for that cohort. And, yes, I think that these students will likely continue to not do as well as their otherwise "near miss" counterparts.

This is bad for those students, and it is bad for Caribbean schools in general. Overall, more U.S. spots is a good thing for people who would otherwise have had their education in the U.S. but were forced, through an artificial cartel imposed by the AAMC and COGME for decades that has now come back to bite the U.S. in the behind (you can never argue with demographics, as my dad is fond of saying), to go Caribbean because they had no other options. Now they will have more options.

-Skip

 

[DocBlin]

Skip & Chris are 100% correct. More US med schools (MD &/or DO), more US spots but the issue still will be #s of residencies spots to handle the large influx of US medical grads in the next 10 years...

 

[Skip Intro]

Skip & Chris are 100% correct. More US med schools (MD &/or DO), more US spots but the issue still will be #s of residencies spots to handle the large influx of US medical grads in the next 10 years...

There are plans to cut the amount of money (hence the number and/or amounts of funded positions, one would assume) in the President's 2015 budget. But, at the same time, he mentions some "workforce initiative" (whatever that truly means) to increase primary care spots.

The president proposes a new workforce initiative to expand residency training in “primary care or high-need specialties;” however the president’s budget includes $402 billion in health-related cuts over 10 years, including cuts to providers and cuts in payments to teaching hospitals for doctor training and complex patient care

https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/washh...dgetproposesworkforceprogramalterationsn.html

I think this is a very confusing time for healthcare all the way around. Right now, I'm just trying to make and save as much money as I can and hope the bottom doesn't fall out.

-Skip

 

[laricb]

There are plans to cut the amount of money (hence the number and/or amounts of funded positions, one would assume) in the President's 2015 budget. But, at the same time, he mentions some "workforce initiative" (whatever that truly means) to increase primary care spots.



https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/washh...dgetproposesworkforceprogramalterationsn.html

I think this is a very confusing time for healthcare all the way around. Right now, I'm just trying to make and save as much money as I can and hope the bottom doesn't fall out.

-Skip

Then you have this


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...poses-record-funding-for-new-doctors/5836317/

 

[premed1001]

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[Skip Intro]

They have no clue what they are doing. Trust me.

It'd be like you getting upset about how much the electrician is charging you to rewire your house. You personally don't know how to rewire your house, but you read a little about it in a couple of books and on the Internet. Instead of trying to rewire your house yourself, you're going to tell the electrician what they can and can't do and what you will and will not pay for. What little you know about an electrician's job tells them that the wires must be connected with screw caps. So, the electrician must put all the screw caps on in the right places, something he'd do anyway as part of his job, but now document that and submit it with the bill. Because sometimes screw caps fall off and cause a problem, you see? It doesn't really matter if the house is wired completely wrong, or done perfectly. He just has to send in the count of how many screw-caps he's used or you have the right to refuse to pay him.

Same thing. You have a bunch of non-doctors telling doctors what's important and what they're going to pay for. You either play by their rules, or you don't get paid. That's what pay-for-performance is.

Everything that is wrong with the rest of government oversight, like the OSHA horror stories to name one, has finally crept into healthcare. And it's not going to make it better. It's going to kill our system. Look at what was just made public about the VA, things the rest of us have known for years, have dealt with, and have worked around. That's government healthcare at work for you.

-Skip