What’s The Difference Between M.D. and D.O.?

Similarities

• DO = doctor of osteopathic medicine (10% of practicing physicians in USA)

• MD = medical doctor (90% of practicing physicians in USA)

I myself am a DO for those of you that don't know that already

There are many more similarities between MDs and DOs now a days they are almost indistinguishable

• Both licensed to practice evidence based medicine in all 50 states. Both function as one would think of as a traditional doctor and both are equivocal in terms of areas of specialty to pursue as well as diagnosing and treating medical conditions.

I know a LOT of patients I've talked to didn't even realize there was a true difference between MD and DO, and most don't actually care what letters you have behind your name. They're much more interested in the way you treat them..

Differences

1. Most obvious difference is DO's practice something called osteopathic manipulative therapy or OMT. This is a set of hands on techniques that manipulates your own bodies tissues in order to diagnose, treat, and prevent illness and injuries. OMT is a noninvasive and low risk way of helping solve problems in replacement of medication and event sometimes surgery. DOs spend 300+ hours practicing and enhancing their OMT skills throughout their 4 years of medical school.

2. DO medical school curriculum focus on a holistic approach to health care and have 4 tenants that are integral specifically to osteopathic medicine. They are:

   1. The body is a unit; the person is a unit of body, mind, and spirit.

   2. The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing, and health maintenance.

   3. Structure and function are reciprocally interrelated.

   4. Rational treatment is based upon an understanding of the basic principles of body unity, self-regulation, and the interrelationship of structure and function.

   • Based on these 4 tenants its easy to understand not only what holistic health care is but how its used especially focusing on the patient as a whole and not just a specific disease process that may be occurring because everything in the human body is connected

   • Again I do want to reiterate that these are not specific to DOs as there are plenty of MDs who focus on treating the patient as a whole. I'm just stating the emphasis that DOs have on this is integrated and interwoven within their medical school curriculum itself

   • Also DOs are NOT holistic doctors that you hear about, but are licensed, practicing physicians with an emphasis on treating the patient as a whole as described before

3. Schooling - MDs and DOs have separate medical schools for each type of curriculum. Both undergo rigorous studies in everything imaginable involving the human body from microbiology and anatomy, to pathophysiology and clinical diagnosis with specific treatment modalities. Both have to complete the same duration of time in medical school, which is approximately 4 years. Again, DOs have to undergo an extra 200-400 hours of additional course work in OMT.

   • Both are extremely difficult to get into requiring high MCAT and GPAs as well as extra curricular activities, but in general GPA and MCAT scores required to get into MD schools are slightly higher than DO schools with that gap closing each year. However, there are significantly fewer DO schools in the country (1 in 4 ratio of DO to MD schools) so this means fewer application options for DO schools in general. I would argue though that it's probably still slightly harder to get into an MD school than a DO school based on empirical evidence

4. There used to be different residency programs for DOs and MDs, or extended training after medical school, whereas MDs could only train under the MD accreditation system and DOs could train under both, but these have since merged this past couple of years where BOTH DOs and MDs train under one accreditation system (ACGME). Again this kind of furthers my point before about MDs and DOs being extremely similar

When choosing your doctor, the letters at the end of their name is much less significant than the way they communicate with you, hold your trust, portray empathy, as well as work with you to solve whatever medical condition that is effecting your life. Both MDs and DOs are competent in their area of expertise because they both require rigorous board certification processes in order to practice legally in the United States. And like anything in life, you can be really good at something or not so good at something regardless of your degree.