Any osteopaths?

Triathlon Forum
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I’m wondering if there are any osteopaths out there…Mcat is this weekend and i’m fried from studying so i figured i’d work on finding someone who i could talk to about osteopathic medicine since it’s something that i’m interested in (i’m not looking for recommendations so don’t be afraid, i just want to know about your profession). thanks!

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Are you in med school?

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My two cents about osteopaths…

  • Very few (actually none) of the osteopaths that I know actually practice osteopathic medicine or do osteopathic manipulations. They are internests, or other types of doctors… Speaking to them even if they wanted to do that stuff intheir practice the nature of insurance repayments makes it difficult to build a practice around it…

  • If you think that you may want to specialize, there are some specialities which are DO friendly and many which are not… in my experience family, internal med, and emergency med are the 3 big DO friendly areas… Surgery, internal medicine specialites (cardiology, GI, etc. ) are not as friendly.

  • If you want to practice medicine as a DO you are going to run into discrimintation despite your skill as a physician. Same thing with the carribean schools… with both of these it doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you are going to run into roadblocks which MDs do not face.

  • In a nutshell hey osteopathic med is great if that is what you want to do primarily. If you want to practice medicine and have the maximum amount of flexibility when it comes to choosing your career path I would just plug away and go to med school.
    If you want to be an internist or a generalist… DO school is a great option… it just gets hard if you have ambitions of doing something more competitve.

Good luck on the MCATs… 30 is the magic number… and you should already have your applications in.

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Not a DO but an MD. I work with several DOS and they dont do a lot of manipulation, usually just on coworkers and the occasional patient. There is a group intown of DOs that do manipulations I believe they are FPS. It is tougher to make your way into Surgical subspecialties as a DO but I do know 2 fine DO Surgeons. I think DO and MDs are about equal and the old sterotypes about DOs being inferior is unfair however it is there.

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Sorry I should have clarified…

DOs in the USA

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To get real on this topic: DO schools are essentially a “backdoor” to medical school as are the carribean schools. Those that don’t have the grades to get into traditional medical school (MDs) go the alternative route. Any that deny this are just being defensive. I work with several DOs. Some are excellent doctors others are not. On average they are not as good as MDs because their selection criterion is less but that does not mean that any individual DO is not a good doc.

I know I will be flamed for this but it is the truth.

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I agree. Well I guess I concur…

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My Primary is a DO (Loyola Grad)…never ever has he done any manipulations.

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I’m a 3rd year osteopathic medical student. I’d be happy to talk with you. email velodemonatyahoo.com