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- Mar 12, 2017
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Good question.
Have you seen the old Karate Kid movie?
Remember Cobra Kai Dojo?
Imagine Mr Miyagi’s face when someone says that they know karate, they learned it all a shopping mall in 2 weekend classes at Cobra Kai Dojo.
How do these MD schools “teach” OMT?”
Who is “teaching” it? (At these MD schools)
OMT is as much of an art as it is a lifelong study.
OMT is not just some stretching or “shotgun” wackin’ someone’s tweaked back from mowing the lawn.
What you mention about some DO schools appearing to teach very little OMT — it could be the brand new schools struggling and wingin’ it with the mandatory OMM/OMT lectures and labs (until they can recruit from a very small pool of legit professors, see below)
Imagine the movie Kindergarten Cop - you have a classroom full of doubtful DO first year students and an under staffed Brand new OMT Dept — likely akin to herding cats.
Like Special Operators in the military, the NMM/OMM bona-fide-additionally-board-certified DO attendings is very limited in the whole USA - less than 1000 of us total. Of those 1000 (more like 700) a DO school would have to entice them to leave a very lucrative private cash based practice to come teach doubtful DO students who roll their eyes at OMT. Thus the pool to choose from is very limited indeed.
A DO residency trained in FM/OMT can never be an OMT department head - even if they are fellowship trained in Sports etc. An OMM department head must be NMM board certified and must have an AOA internship year as a part of their total residency training (as opposed to a DO student going through an MD residency).
Oh by the way, just so some of these self-depreciating DO Med students know — NMM attendings do very well financially and are very fulfilled in their work.
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