 D.O. or MD. What's the better option? Is one actually better than the other? Let's discuss. Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lachlan, an internal medicine physician, helping students just like you do better on a medical journey, but doing it with less stress. Today, I want to talk about a very important topic, and that's helping distinguish the difference between a D.O. or a doctor of osteopathic medicine and an MD, which is a doctor of allopathic medicine, although it doesn't actually add up to MD. Now, I want to make this video for a lot of reasons. Personally, as an MD, I've seen a lot of backlash and kind of scrutiny on social media for my colleagues who have a D.O., and I really want to get into the differences and understand that really there is no difference between me and one of my D.O. colleagues. And I know there are going to be people out there that are interested in one field versus the other. I want to know, is there really a difference is one really better? And then two, most importantly, there are going to be some of you guys who may have your own opinions that this one is possibly better than the other, and I really want to just kind of clean the slate of that. So hopefully this video helps you out and check out the different chapters down below in case you have a specific question of how one is better or how they differ in terms of things like salaries and grades and ease to get into, as well as training. All those will be linked down below in the chapter. So jump to your own personalized question, but let's get into it. So first, let's start with what is a D.O. And I feel like most people know what an MD is because that's like their definition of what they consider to be as a traditional doctor. But a D.O. is considered to be a doctor of osteopathic medicine. Now, this was kind of a style of medicine that was started in the 1870s by Dr. Still. And essentially, Dr. Still created this idea that the body is considered to be one unit and you can use things outside of just like very traditional medicine to be able to help heal the body. So a lot of things that doctors about osteopathic medicine are trained in are something called OMM. Now, OMM is really the main distinction between a D.O. and an MD. With the idea that the human is an entire body, OMM is Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. It's basically different techniques that an MD doesn't know that a D.O. does know that they can use using their knowledge of neurologic as well as musculoskeletal kind of anatomy to be able to help the body heal through certain techniques and maneuvers. And when somebody goes to D.O. school, they're trained for about at least a minimum of 200 hours throughout their four years of medical school to learn these various techniques and possibly and ideally use them as they graduate and practice. But aside from that, a D.O. and an MD are essentially the exact same thing. An MD will prescribe you the same medications that a D.O. doctor will. We use the same guidelines and kind of recommendations for medicine. It's just that a D.O. is actually trained with a little bit more techniques or strategies that may be able to help you heal from your certain ailments. And so that's the biggest takeaway from this video is that they are the exact same things. Now I want to really use the rest of the video to really help you understand the difference of what the journey looks like if you were choose to go to D.O. school or if you choose to go to MD school and what your future may look like if you chose one path over the other. So as we get into the journey of D.O. versus MD, let's talk about kind of which is harder to get into. Now let's talk about the scores itself. When we go into the grades, the first thing we can look at are things like GPA of students who get into a D.O. school versus MD school. Now on average, a D.O. school typically has a little less in terms of a GPA and MCAT but they're still very impressive. So an MD school may have a GPA on average of the accepted student of a 3.7 where a D.O. school will be somewhere around 3.5. So still both amazing. We get into scores like the MCAT which is the admission exam that you take when you're in college to get into medical school. Using the new score system that's been around for a few years, to get into MD school the average is about a 5.10. It will vary from year to year and then to get into a D.O. school the average is about a 5.03 to a 5.05. So overall not that different but there are going to be students out there who may not do amazing on the MCAT but still have the potential of being an amazing doctor and may end up applying to D.O. school. So again, the grade itself doesn't necessarily represent the quality of the applicant because there's so much more that goes into becoming an amazing medical student, amazing physician than just your scores alone. But in turn but at least in regards to grades, getting into an MD school is a little bit harder than getting into a D.O. school. Now in regards to actually getting into an D.O. school I would argue that getting into a D.O. school can be more difficult for a few reasons. One, when you apply to a D.O. school they want to make sure that you understand what the actual principles of osteopathic medicine is. Do you know how it's founded? Do you know what they're teaching and is that something that you have an interest of learning and possibly using in the future? So not only do you have to show I have the knowledge compared to an MD school and no one really asks you to know what being a doctor is, it's not really a question to get. But as a possible applicant as a D.O. school that will be a question you'll likely ask on your applications, your essays, and definitely during your interviews. And as a little bit of background when I was applying to medical school around the state of Texas, one of the programs that it did apply to was a D.O. school which is actually where a lot of my colleagues have went to school. It was actually a great experience. I enjoyed my interview and I'd have to make sure that it did my due diligence when I was researching what a D.O. was and what it involved for me as a future. And it was a school that I was actually accepted at. So it was possibly for that I could be a D.O. as I'm making this video but I had other opportunities that I chose to take instead. But I had a great experience but again I had to do my due diligence to prove that I knew what a D.O. was and that I could possibly be one in the future. And so not only do you have to have that knowledge but a lot of D.O. schools may require some hours of shadowing and possibly a letter from the D.O. that again shows that you kind of know what that life will look like. You at least know what doctor's othiopathic medicine is and you're not just doing it as like your second choice. You know D.O. schools really want to make sure they take applicants that are interested in their program and not just somebody who wants to become a physician and use them as a backup. And then finally to add to the level of difficulty in terms of how you apply to both M.D. and D.O. school, the main kind of application kind of program to apply to M.D. school is called a AMCAS which has a majority of schools around the United States for M.D. except Texas which has its own application called the TMDAS. But most D.O. schools across the country use their own application called the AA commas and I'm probably saying that wrong but I'll link those down below in case you're interested. But two different applications in case you're interested in applying to M.D. and D.O. school versus if you're just applying to M.D. school there's really just main one application maybe two if you live in Texas like I did that you have to apply to. So you can argue that the process of applying to D.O. school is a little bit harder because you have to prove that you're actually interested in becoming a doctor of osteopathic medicine possibly in the future. Now next we'll talk about cost of actually going to a D.O. school versus M.D. school and here they don't actually vary too much the real answer is that they're both equally expensive. Now when you look at the cost of an M.D. school it can go anywhere from 30 to 50 thousand dollars per year depending on if you're going to a private or public institution. It gets a little bit cheaper it gets a little bit more expensive depending on where in the country you are so my intuition is a little bit lower but when you look at D.O. school it's roughly about the same. So if it's like 32,000 for an M.D. school maybe 34,000 for a D.O. school but honestly not that much different. And then finally the length of training to become a D.O. versus M.D. is exactly the same. So it's four years of medical school regardless if you're trying to be an M.D. or a D.O. just remember that the main difference is that when you're a D.O. you're going to be learning those O.M.M.s of the osteopathic manipulative medicine doing about 200 hours. There's going to be more into your curriculum than probably some of your M.D. colleagues who just have to understand the very typical generic allopathic medicine where your D.O. colleagues may be understanding all of that on top of O.M.M. during their training. Now next I want to talk about the different tests that a D.O. will take that an M.D. won't and the main takeaway is that a D.O. will take a lot more board exams than somebody who's an M.D. school. Personally myself when I was in medical school I took the U.S. M.D. step one after my second year medical school and then I used to took the U.S. M.D. step two after my third to fourth year of medical school and back then they actually had a U.S. M.D. step two C.S. which doesn't exist anymore but my D.O. colleagues not only had to take U.S. M.D. one and U.S. M.D. two during medical school but they also had to take Comlex one and Comlex two which are their own respective board exams and unfortunately they have to take twice as many board exams that I do when I was in medical school. The information is very similar but they do have some concepts on O.M.M. then they may have to learn and so it's just more testing more board exams and honestly a little bit more stress. So at this point you can easily argue that the M.D. compares to a D.O. the D.O. had to do a lot more to get into medical school and to prove that they were interested in D.O. school and also that they had to take a lot more board exams compared to somebody like myself. Now next we want to talk about kind of residency so what happens after medical school where you get to train for your ultimate specialty of in general medicine, surgery, dermatology, etc. So in the main takeaway is that somebody who graduates from D.O. school even though they may have the same scores and performances as somebody like their M.D. colleagues they may just not get the right recognition from residency programs around the country and I think a lot of this is just that we're just a little bit behind time and understanding that both of them aren't equal in terms of knowledge base. If anything my D.O. colleagues have had to work a lot harder when they're in medical school to compare to somebody like myself just because they had to take more board exams and all the things that we talked about earlier but they're equal in terms of my knowledge base but for some reason somebody looks at my M.D. as a little bit more valuable when it's honestly not that true but at least for the moment of residency somebody has to work just as hard to get to the same place as somebody in M.D. school for the most part but I have had colleagues who have gotten into amazing and competitive specialties like dermatology out of D.O. school things like radiation oncology as well as colleagues that work with me on my internal medicine program that have D.O.s and I couldn't tell you the difference between them and myself. Now after residency and after medical school really want to ask like what does your future careers look like what do your options look like now this is really where the difference lies most D.O.s will go into primary care for one reason or another again residency is a little bit more difficult to get into some of those specialty programs so about 57 to about 30 percent of students who graduate from a D.O. school will go into some field or sector that's related to primary care either in child medicine family medicine or pediatrics and that number is about 30 for M.D.s as the making of this video. Now in terms of other differences there are students who go from D.O. school and actually go into residency specifically using OMM or neuromuscular medicine and they have their own unique kind of residency programs that's honestly not that common it's actually more common for most students and practitioners in the future who went to D.O. school to actually not use OMM very much in their day to day practice but now we get into the final question which is which is better and if we talk about kind of quality and knowledge base you have to understand again the theme of this video is that they are exactly the same I have some amazing D.O. colleagues that honestly probably know more than I do mainly because of their experience their exposures and also the fact that they just had to work their ass off to get to the same point that I was at in terms of board exams in terms of kind of the residency program that we're in and so having a D.O. as your actual practitioner or a colleague actually you should appreciate how much hard work has gone into them getting into that fact because may have just been held back by a low MCAT score or a GPA that was lower in college but now they've figured out their setting and when all of that is like nicely put together they're amazing position they have amazing patient rapport so really there's no difference between an M.D. and a D.O. in terms of their quality as an actual position if you're asking which one should I go to and perhaps your scores haven't been amazing or you're deciding should you try to boost up your GPA or go into D.O. school honestly being a doctor is probably more important than being picky between one versus the other just understand that if you do go into D.O. school with idea of just want to become a doctor but not necessarily practice OMM there's nothing really wrong with that that's actually more common than not but understand that it is more important to become a doctor if that's really within your goals and try to decide between one school versus other remember you may have to work harder in D.O. school to get to the same level as somebody in M.D. school just because we're a little bit behind the times and trying to understand when it comes to residency and compensation for like a full-time job that they're the exact same things and for anyone who ultimately chooses to go to D.O. school or if you're in D.O. school right now and you want to understand how can I make myself competitive for a very competitive specialty like dermatology radiation oncology orthopedic surgery I would just say try to find your best experiences to your research in those fields and if your institution doesn't allow it or doesn't supply it then go and figure out how you can get to other nearby institutions either through emails zooms COVID really helped us get very resourceful for being able to work through the internet through zoom and being able to do those research projects across the country instead of just kind of within your locals of code but the main takeaway regardless of your student regardless of your patient or regardless if you're already a physician yourself is that they are the exact same things the quality of your education really doesn't determine how good of a doctor you're going to be it's really what you do with that knowledge once you acquire of how well you apply it how well you get that pattern recognition and so there are definitely D.O.'s that are there that better doctors than me there are D.O.'s that probably not as great and that really doesn't have to do anything with the last two letters that we have behind our name just has to do with how hard we work how well we combine knowledge how well we use pattern recognition and how hard we work to really serve our patients so if you're interested in becoming a doctor one is not better than the other but hopefully this video helped you understand the differences and mainly what your journey would look like if you chose one field versus the other now if you have more questions about the difference between a D.O. and MD you have a specific question of like which one you should pick go ahead and add your comments down below or send me an email at mdjourney.com and gmail.com I'd be happy to answer them as soon as I get to it now if you enjoyed this video and if you enjoyed some of my takeaways on the difference between the two then go ahead hit that like button really it'll help support the channel first of all and to and most importantly it'll actually help spread this video to other people who may have a misconception about what a D.O. is and possibly it's not better than MD which is again not true so go ahead hit that like button third time fourth time second time however many times hit that subscribe button too in case you're new to the channel or if you're watching some other videos and haven't hit that commitment just yet hit that subscribe button to get more videos just like this on a weekly basis and regardless if you're on your medical journey as an MD or a D.O. and you want to learn how to just crush it and become a top student but doing it with less stress check out some of the programs that we have down below for you including the med school domination bundle which includes some of my best step-by-step advice on how to study how to be more productive how to manage your stress just crush it on every phase of your medical journey those will be linked down below as well as the rest of our programs but with that being said guys hopefully you guys enjoyed this video thank you so much for making it to the very end thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours if you did enjoy this video then check out this video and how you can use anki like a pro to study like a boss in medical school both that friends I will see you guys in the next one peace