"Recently, the AOA has been contacted by members experiencing discrimination in hospitals in Boise, Idaho (St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center and St Luke's Boise Medical Center) and North Carolina (Carolinas Medical Center and Moore Regional Health Center). These hospitals and health systems have denied hospital privileges to DOs with osteopathic training and board certification, rather than ACGME/ABMS credentials.
The AOA is here to help educate health care facilities about osteopathic medical education to ensure that DOs are treated fairly. If you are currently experiencing discrimination or have experienced discrimination in the past regarding hospital privileges, whether at the hospitals listed above or elsewhere, please contact the AOA....
The AOA is committed to protecting DOs' practice rights. "
Frankly, I think this kind of discrimination is bullsh@t. As a hard working Osteopathic medical student, I find this highly offensive. D.O.'s are playing a critical role in supplying not only this country, but the world, with highly qualified, well trained physicians. We took the same stinking MCAT and challenging college courses and subjected ourselves to the same brutal admissions process as M.D. students.
We also learn the exact same things as M.D. medical students plus some. Want to come by and visit my classroom for a day, Mr. Discriminator? Our school year is longer. My days in the class (8-4 or 8-5 often) are long and vigorous. I have an extra thousand plus hours in hands on manipulative treatment and anatomical study. Our program is 4 years plus residency (3-7). I will take both the COMLEX and still kick ass on your little USMLE as well. I will likely, due to location issues, work at an allopathic EM residency. So whats the deal? We can do the same things as M.D.s, we can practice is over 55 countries, and we will constitute 1 out of every 5 U.S. physicians by 2020. So please, NC and ID hospitals, spare me the elitist M.D. "good ol' boy" mentality because, I can tell you right now, I am going to be an awesome Osteopathic EM physician and you better believe I am coming to a hospital near you, maybe even yours.
oh, and yes, I am taking on the same $380,000 in debt to become a doctor. A little respect please.
7
ps. I was working in a highly respected, regional level 1 EM dept. last week and there were an 1:1 ratio between D.O.s and M.D.s at the time. Guess what? They were all doing a good job.
16 comments:
Hey man, if you went to a "real" med school you wouldn't have to worry about this shit.
screw you tk!
I am back to posting music on my blog. Thanks for calling me on the lack of tunes!
As for the whole discrimination thing, just be damned good at whatever you do & you'll help both yourself & the DO profession in general. You'll be surprised at how useful it is that you started developing your palpation skills on day 1 of med school & how you likely automatically think of the body as a connected unit. Simple stuff, but it makes a difference.
I graduated summa cum laude w/a degree in biochem & molecular bio (and I have social skills, honest!) and I applied to only DO schools b/c I wanted to have OMM in my toolbox. The DO I shadowed was a supersmart Stanford grad who chose to go to DO school b/c she wanted to be an old skool osteopath. I'm glad I chose her as one of my early role models and would choose the same path if I had to do it all over again.
But damn, I'm glad to be done w/the first two years of med school. Loved 'em & even miss them at times, but I've gotta get those letters after my name someday and I'm glad keep moving down the path.
Thanks for your insights MG. It is nice to have a fellow osteopathic medical student along for the ride...
I wish I was in 3rd year and pass the boards as well.
I am constantly behind and in a minor state of panic. I went to a fair today and while I enjoyed it, there was a little devil on my shoulder all day telling me that I should be studying!
that little fucker. I hate him.
That little devil on your shoulder gets around! Glad you had fun at the fair.
I don't think I ever met a 2nd year student who wasn't behind. It's a lot of material & you'll find that you somehow get through most of it. As long as you work steadily (with breaks, of course!) you'll be just fine.
[Mounting soapbox] I highly recommend finding out very soon whether you like Goljan. If you do, start listening in your spare time now. Does your car have a cd player? If not you can use an iPod or copy the lectures onto cassette tape. Then get his book so you can annotate it as you listen once you get more serious about board study. Goljan's lectures actually helped me on comprehensive PBL module exams as well as improved my general clinical reasoning during 2nd year. I wish I'd listened to all of his lectures during 2nd year *before* boards prep time (and then again during BP), rather than the haphazard way in which I did it early on.
Assuming your school gets a good discount w/Kaplan, you can also get QBank ~6-9 months before boards and use it for your module (or medicine, path, etc.) exams! [dismounting soapbox]
:-)
Yeah...I listened to half of Goljan over the summer on the pod on the beach. I liked it. I have been using his book for the systems as well and adding anything valuable into the book and First aid from my lecture powerpoints/class that I feel is valuable. Trying to set myself up for a less miserable board studying experience but I dont think that is possible.
I heard his neuro part of the audio was either no existent or not good so I have not used it for neuro yet.
I;m also a bit concerned about biochem as I dont remember much from last year and I passed on a lot of that stuff in college (I was studying ecology). There is so much crap in the biochem BRS!
thanks for the suggestions. sort of makes me feel better that I have started on some of them! Would love to get Kaplan qbank for maybe a bit early at this point. only 1 system in!
cheers
I agree about Big G's neuro section, tho' it's not totally worthless, just not as comprehensive as one would hope. Should be a quick listen for you now that you're done w/neuro.
Your board study will be just fine if you're already annotating FA & G-Path. The questions aren't that hard if you do that and do QBank. I threw QB factoids into FA (or G-Path when appropriate). If you can do the QB questions (by the end, not at the start!) you should be just fine on both COMLEX & USMLE, assuming you review the relevant OMM & neuromusculoskeletal anatomy.
As for biochem, I didn't study it much for boards. My degree was fairly light on metabolism, too, so I can't say I remembered everything from college. If I'd studied more biochem I might have done a little better on boards, but not much. There were quite a few basic molecular biology questions (esp. being able to interpret experimental results...not so much memorization, just general thinking questions) on my USMLE, as well as a few basic biochem questions. I hear the Kaplan biochem videos are good for biochem, but I didn't have time to watch most of them.
Do you have Goljan's High Yield facts & Path exam? I can help if you lack any of his stuff. It's very good for the clinical biochem/metabolism.
Just keep studying and don't worry about boards just yet. If you study for your modules you'll do fine (and the board prep plan will take shape a little later, but get those Goljan materials now so you have them!).
Correction - there were *a few* molecular bio questions on the test. If you're not shooting to go into a very competitive residency you could theoretically skip most strict biochem study and still do fairly well if you knew your other stuff well! Of course this would be pretty dumb b/c if you took & passed biochem in med school you should be able to get a bunch of questions right w/a little targeted review. Be sure to know the most basic principles and anything in Goljan's HYs. Goljan + QB was plenty for me. If you want to be a dermatologist then you'll need to do more than this.
I'm not suggesting you blow off biochem study, but definitely focus on the bigger picture before worrying about a relatively low-yield individual subject like biochem. You'd probably get more from worrying about Micro. If you're anything like me, many of your fears are based on not knowing what the test will require you to know, so you think you need to know everything. That's a great long-term goal, but things like QBank (or USMLE World) will help you to navigate what you need to know and give you practice answering board-style questions...and you'll realize that it's just a lot of material that you need to get through. Goljan will help you to solidify/review/integrate key physiologic & clinical concepts. As he says, the more you read, the better you'll do. I wholeheartedly believe that after taking boards!
Man, sorry for all the long comments. Good luck finishing your h&p soon & get some rest!
Are you guys speaking English???
medicine is its own language.
spent the first year learning some of it. still working on it
Good point, Anon & 7.
We spend years learning the language of medicine.
Then we spend the rest of our lives learning how to translate it into English so patients can understand what we're talking about.
Hey - even though you went to a DO school, you had the opportunity to take the USMLE and go to an ACGME accredited residency. You know what? 60% of your fellow DO students did just that! You know why? They knew the AOA was full of it, they knew the COMLEX was a bad test, and they didn't want to have to whine about life later.
DOss-
Thank you for your comment, however, I don't really understand it. What is your argument?
How does your comment address discrimination against accredited, licensed D.O. physicians in hospitals?
I personally plan on taking the USMLE and applying to MD residencies (for geographic reasons) but I do not feel this is a requirement in order to avoid harressment and discrimation as a D.O.
Please clarify if you so choose as your comment does not make too much sense
7
I recently worked with a young doc-in-training who believes his life would have been different had he taken both USMLE & COMLEX. I told him I'm interested in specializing in OMM & he shot back that I "can do whatever I want" b/c I took the USMLE and did well. He said he "would take a chainsaw to a man for scores like [mine]." Too bad for me board scores have little bearing on OMM competency.
I have heard that some residency directors don't know (or care to know) how to compare COMLEX & USMLE scores which is one reason many students choose to take both.
On the other hand, I'd rather not go into a residency whose director has any level of disdain for DOs. Interns are treated with too little respect as it is and treated worst at some of the most competitive or "best" programs.
It's never easy being a minority. TeleCrusher's comment is sad, but true.
This is very interesting content! I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your points and have come to the conclusion that you are right about many of them. You are great.Osteopath in Sydney
Post a Comment