What is osteopathy?
Osteopathic medicine provides all of the benefits of modern medicine including prescription drugs, surgery, and the use of technology to diagnose disease and evaluate injury. Offering the added benefit of hands-on diagnosis and treatment, providers achieve this through a system of therapy known as osteopathic manipulative medicine. Osteopathic medicine emphasizes helping each person achieve a high level of wellness by focusing on health promotion and disease prevention.
What training is required to become an osteopath? What are the similarities and difference between an osteopathic physician (DO) and medical doctor (MD)?
The following information comes from the American Osteopathic Association.
Alike: Students entering both DO and MD medical colleges typically have already completed four-year bachelor's degrees with an emphasis on scientific courses. They both complete four years of basic medical education.
Different: Osteopathic medical schools emphasize training students to be primary care physicians and to practice a "whole person" approach to medicine instead of just treating specific symptoms or illnesses.
Alike: After medical school, both MDs and DOs obtain graduate medical education through such programs as internships and residencies, which typically last three to eight years and prepare DOs and MDs to practice a specialty. Both DOs and MDs can choose to practice in any specialty of medicine—such as pediatrics, family medicine, psychiatry, surgery or ophthalmology. DOs and MDs must pass comparable examinations to obtain state licenses. They both practice in accredited and licensed health care facilities.
Different: Unlike MDs, DOs receive extra training in the musculoskeletal system—the body's interconnected system of nerves, muscles and bones, providing them with an in-depth understanding of the ways that illness or injury in one part of the body can affect another. With this knowledge, DOs incorporate osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) into their patient care, using their hands to diagnose illness and injury and to encourage the body's natural tendency toward good health.
What is the history of osteopathy?
Andrew Taylor Still, MD, DO was the father of osteopathic medicine as well as the founder of the first college of osteopathic medicine. In the early 1870s, Dr. Still separated himself from his MD counterparts by his pervasive criticism of the misuse of drugs common to the day. Believing that medicine should offer the patient more, Dr. Still supported a philosophy of medicine different from the practice of his day and in their place he advocated the use of osteopathic manipulative treatment. Dr. Still founded a philosophy of medicine based on ideas that date back to Hippocrates. The philosophy focuses on the unity of all body parts. Identifying the musculoskeletal system as a key element of health, he recognized the body's ability to heal itself and stressed preventive medicine, eating properly, and keeping fit.
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