DO vs MD - What's The Difference?
D.O vs M.D. - The two types of Physicians in the United States
Let me be very clear that a doctor's ability to care for a patient is not defined by his or her degree. There are good doctors that are both MD's and DO's. Both MDs and DOs, can be excellent doctors, clinicians, educators, researchers and surgeons. You already know that both mds and do's are fully licensed to practice medicine in the United States to its full degree, including prescribing, treating and doing surgeries.
I met a DO doctor for the first time when I was shadowing during undergrad. He was an anesthesiologist and that's when I realized that DO's do exactly the same thing as MD's. It was kind of a mind-blowing moment where there is another degree that does the same thing. Also during medical school, my favorite instructor was a DO and during my internship a lot of my co-residents were DO's and every single one of them excellent people.
Your patients are not going to care whether you have an MD or a DO degree. All they care about is that you help them and that you empathize with them. You might have to explain to your uncle. What a DO is, you know, educate him, he's not going to be like DO's, not a medical degree. It's missing a letter and it has an extra letter, no one's going to say that he'll be like oh okay, can you take a look at a mole on my butt or ask you other weird questions like my legs cramp every time I poop, can you look Into that they honestly are not going to care.
Historically, there are differences, like being a Medical Doctor was more research, oriented generally and an Osteopathic doctor treated the whole patient and focused on preventative care. These days the concept of evidence-based medicine and treating the whole patient and prevention. They will be mentioned in your first week of medical school, both nd and dl, if not the first day of medical school, a big difference even to this day is that Osteopathic physicians learn OMT, osteopathic manipulative technique, that Doctors of Medicine don't get to learn because it is not taught at a Allopathic Medical School
Is MD better than DO?
So often the question comes up, which is better, DO or MD and the answer is that both are the same. They are equally awesome. They both do a lot for the patient and that's the end of it. That's the answer, but that's not why you're here you're here for the nitty-gritty details on the difference between the two, maybe you're deciding between the two or you're just curious.
Is an MD degree more prestigious than a DO Degree?
I think the most accurate way of saying it is in the field of medicine. There is a perceived sense of security of MDs over DOs. These were the words written by the president of a DO school and i'm going to go over the four main reasons.
Why, first reason, the main reason is that the md degree is generally more well known. It has been around much longer. The first medical school was founded in the US in 1765 in Philadelphia now known as U-Penn - Perlman school of medicine. The first DO school was found by Doctor A.T Stills. The American school of osteopathy, now known as AT Still university in Kirksville Missouri. Doctor Still was an M.D. when he founded the school, so he technically didn't graduate from D.O school, but I guess he gave himself one because he found the whole thing and you know that's okay.
I think also there are way more M.Ds than D.Os. There are about eight hundred thousand doctors practicing in the US and about fifty thousand are DOs. That's less than ten percent of the total doctor working population. Also MD's are portrayed generally in a good light in TV shows and in the popular culture you know, House MD, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, The Good Doctor, The Resident, they're all about MD's.
The third reason is that M.D. candidates to residency positions have a higher chance of going into the specialty they want and to more popular programs compared to D.O applicants. So we don't know if this is from just program, directors, favoring the md degree or that md applicants are stronger. There isn't any data to kind of look into this. There are, however, program directors of residency. Programs have openly stated that they don't take any dos because of how it'll make their program look.
The fourth and the final reason is that medicine is a field that is driven by research and evidence and discovery of due knowledge for the patients and in the research realm, and these are killing it, both MDs and PhDs. Historically, MD medical schools have encouraged research and conducting research to its students. A lot more DO Schools have been looking at a Covid-19, now evaluating how the disease works and running clinical trials and looking into potential treatments.
