This is the definition of a strawman. You took what I said and then fabricated your own argument to knock down. The idea that if DO schools got LCME accreditation the bias would diminish is 100% fact. It's irrefutable and not a thought experiment. You never even addressed that. I never said anything about COCA granting MD degrees or any of this other nonsense you are going on about here.
Let’s quote you again:
“If everything is under LCME umbrella the bias against DOs would diminish considerably.”
There are two parts to that sentence. I am challenging the first part: “If everything is under LCME umbrella…,” That is not a reasonable, “if.” I addressed it already, but because you need it in…, fewer words:
Yes, if everything were under the LCME umbrella, the prestige of current DO schools would rise. There, addressed.
And it would be just like how IF the California state universities were under the university of California umbrella, the prestige of the cal states would rise. But the point is silly. Why would the UCs adopt all of the calstates? And is it reasonable to destroy the cal states that don’t meet UC quality and adoptability? That’s what my comments have boiled down to.
If you think it's not very realistic then you haven't been paying attention. The DO world as we know it is flailing like a wounded deer if you read between the lines. The AOA is grasping at any straws it can to try and maintain its relevance by making all sorts of adjustments to its board certification process. They already lost the ability to accredit residencies. They are rapidly increasing the amount of overall DOs in a not so subtle attempt to create as many DOs as possible so they can claim they are needed to oversee them, but that's a farce because most of these people will not be under the AOA umbrella once they graduate school. Whether it happens in the next 5 years or the next 20 doesn't matter, it's over. The writing is on the wall. Even my school's admins, who are very much entrenched in the DO world have made numerous statements subtly acknowledging this fact.
People are very quick to assume intent where they find it most parsimonious. They typically come with no verifiable facts aside from the ones they originally extrapolated from.
In either case, I don’t particularly find this train of thought interesting. It’s not important to me the intent of expansion, so much as the effects. I don’t ask why the baker wakes up in the morning to bake bread. I ask about the price and quality of the bread on the shelves. I’m simply addressing every part of your arguments because based on how you’ve behaved up to, you’re likely to accuse me of ignoring them. I’d like to save you as many visits to the logical fallacies wiki page as possible.
Again, a strawman because you are creating fictional arguments to knock down. It's not about letters. I literally don't give a rats fart what letters are after my name on my white coat someday. The reason I "failed" to get one of the MD spots is because I never applied MD. I chose to apply DO instead of doing an expensive SMP for personal reasons. My 18 year old self made my GPA not MD worthy so I chose to take my excellent MCAT and use it to get into a DO school that I felt could take me to where I wanted to get to. I am 100% confident in my ability to match what I want and am well on my way. None of this negates the fact that COCA is complete garbage, and that the AOA are borderline criminals. I still fail to see "the LCME inaction" you keep going on about. No one is owed a spot in any medical school.
Neat. Expansion allows others in your shoes to chase the same opportunities that you were afforded with marginally diminished prospects.
I didn’t realize it was that difficult to connect the dots I laid out. Perhaps it was the paragraph format. Let me try numbers:
1. Your implied point: There are too many osteopathic students
2. Your implied point: this is the fault of COCA for allowing expanding
3. My point: why aren’t we also blaming LCME for not expanding
4. Rationale: LCME expansion would reduce the pool of potential osteopathic students as well as reduce LCME accredited school standards for admission.
5. Rationale: Osteopathic medical student pool = students who couldn’t get into MD + students who like DO + students who kinda don’t care.
6. Rationale: students who couldn’t get into an MD = directly affected by LCME slot #s
7. Rationale: The existence of an osteopathic student requires a school offering a slot (affected by DO expansion) and a student to accept (affected by LCME stagnation).
8. My point: Current standards are the reason you decided for DO as opposed to MD at all. If there were more MD slots, standards would have dropped such that you would have had a fighting chance and might have reconsidered your DO acceptance.
9. My ultimate point: It’s okay that there exists a lower tier of medical schools so long as they graduate competent physicians with good prospects.
It's a strawman because your arguing against an argument I never made. What are you even talking about? Your analogy is terrible.
Well I agree, but that’s basically your argument. I’m glad we agreed that your original point is terrible. Took some wrangling, but we got there.
Best start believing. The data is there already. DO attrition is increasing. The merger is going to be a wakeup call for many schools. The good students will likely match better and better, but the bottom quartile is in BIG trouble. My school is deathly terrified of this and we even have enough residency spots for the entire class. This was already felt this year.
98% placement. But we’ll see. What will happen will happen.
You believe that opening schools in tiny towns, with zero affiliated GME, with starting class sizes of 162 (not to mention the expansion that inevitably comes later), with plans for students to rotate in private practice clinics and tiny hospitals is a good thing and will produce competent physcians? Because I don't. I'm going to be a DO and I would never let a family member be treated by someone from these schools without looking at where they did their residency training. Again, maybe we should reconsider our standards instead of rationalizing them.
Lots of waxing and waning about supposed clinical competency with zero numbers to substantiate a single one. You’re free to discriminate as you wish. Just a reminder that the old guard thinks the 80 hour workweek limit is silly based on their likewise extremely intuitive feelings about what makes a competent physician.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary numbers. Show me the numbers. Simple as that.
I don't consider "98% found jobs" to actually be that great of a metric. That doesn't tell me at all how competent they are, all it tells me is that there are programs out there that need someone to take call and round on patients.
Maybe we should institute a step 4 with a simulated ward. Standards will be determined by a round table of medical students weighing in on what makes a competent physician.
This is like a broken record. You really need to learn what a strawman is, and it's not a thought experiment. It's calling for change. This nonsense of opening schools in dinky towns with 3k people and then shipping students to a bunch of minute clinics and tiny hospital for preceptor rotations needs to stop. Do you think that is acceptable? You want an example of how garbage COCA is?
Yes. If they pass STEP at decent rates, they’ll figure out what they haven’t in med school on the wards. Learning doesn’t stop once you graduate. I’d have a much bigger problem with this issue at the residency level.
They don't even have a requirement for how many students have to place. None. A school could place exactly ZERO students and that school would not be in violation according to COCA's rules as they are currently written. That is inexcusable.
https://med.virginia.edu/ume-curric...017-18_Functions-and-Structure_2016-03-24.pdf
I was curious about LCME’s standards on this. Linked above seem to be LCME standards. I’m having trouble finding the standard that says that X% of students must place. Maybe you can help me.
You can continue to defend them all you want. The fact is that the AOA and COCA have sold you out in an effort to save themselves and make a quick buck, and they don't care about you or your career in the slightest. DO students succeed in spite of their "leadership," not because of it. We need to raise our standards. If the AOA or COCA can't raise their standards then they shouldn't exist. Period.
Like I said before, I don’t really care too much who profits or how much so long as I get to do what I want and feel well trained. I have no reason to believe that I’ve been inadequately trained. I often meet docs from my school out in the field. Often, I only hear praise about them from their colleagues. I don’t know what happens in those new schools. I can assume, but I reserve that for until I meet their graduates or am allowed insight into their performance in an unbiased and systematic way. Of course I can have kneejerk reactions, but they’re only just that in the absence of evidence or experience. I try not to take away peoples’ opportunities for kneejerk reactions that I haven’t thought deeply about.
