cake and eat it too.

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Hello and happy new year to everyone out there. Hopefully, someone could help me out with a potential dilemma I may be faced with in the future. I would like to attend med-school in my city because it would be a lot less expensive for me in terms of tuition and living expenses. I could actually rent an apartment from my parents at a much lower rate than living on a dorm out of state. The issue that I am having with this option is that my residence school is allopathic and I prefer osteopathic training. I remember reading that the only difference in the two are D.O. schools require an addittional 200hrs. of manipulation training. I’m wondering,…if i attend and graduate from the allopathic school in my city, is there a way to obtain the addittional training to convert my license from M.D. to


D.O. later on? If so, How would this process work?


Or, maybe I just want my cake and eat it too.


Thank you for your responses.

2

If you go to allopathic school you will be an MD. There are MD’s that take additional training in OMM but they retain their degree title.


Also, you may want to consider using a screen name to protect your privacy - you can contact a moderator to change your screen name.

3

Do they take the additional training while they attend allopathic schools or later on? Btw, Robert Neville is the Character from “I Am Legend”

4

I thought that name sounded familiar. Welcome to the site.


Unless you have a highly competitive application and the medical school has a high acceptance rate of in state students, I would apply to more than the one medical school.


Kris

5

Hi Robert (i really want to see that movie!)


I have heard that the training is afterwards. Kris is right, folks typically apply to 5 - 20 or more schools.


Having to move so that you can go to med school is pretty common. I think that it would be unusual to be able to stay in one place for all four years of school and a residency but even if you could swing it it might be nice to see how other practitioners see things.


If you are still in pre-med I wouldn’t worry too much just keep on studying and take the MCAT only when ready.


Best of everything,

6
  • Robert Neville Said:
Do they take the additional training while they attend allopathic schools or later on?



The MD or DO thing reflects the type program you graduate from & not your licensure. Same situation with dentists: DMD vs. DDS, but they are still licensed as dentists.

Regarding OMM training for MDs: being a DO anesthesiologist/intensiv ist, I am not someone who has researched post-grad OMM training; however, if you ask Linda Wilson, she can probably give some excellent insight. She is a 3rd year DO-student at WVSOM & is very invested in OMM.

What I do know is that it is fairly common, very common in the classic DO-heavy states (KS, MO, MI, WI, IA, MN, IL, OH & PA - to name a couple off of the top of my head) for MDs to seek OMM training & credentialling. 2 of my preceptors during my 3rd & 4th years in Saginaw, MI were MDs who actively sought post-grad training in OMM from MI State - this univ has both MD & DO programs on the same campus - to the point of taking periodic sabbaticals from their private practice to take OMM courses alongside the DO students.

So, it can be done. As to precisely how, I cannot tell you - I did it during school.

Best of luck to you! And, if you do find out some formal mechanisms, please post them here somewhere as we get this sort of question fairly often & it would be great to have some legit resources we can direct folks towards.