Osteopaths & MDs – More Alike Than Different
Your doctor is a D.O. – Does that matter?
The number of osteopaths has risen, yet many people don’t know what they are.
More than a quarter of all medical students in the U.S. are training to become D.O.s, thanks in part to limited slots in traditional medical schools and ever-growing openings at osteopathic schools (14 campuses have opened in the past five years).
In recent years, the field has gained prestige as its doctors have risen to the highest medical posts in the country: leading top medical systems, overseeing NASA’s medical team, running the most followed medical page on social media and, during the past three national political administrations, overseeing the medical care of the President of the U.S.
Yet the changing face of medicine has been largely invisible to the public. Beyond vague notions that D.O.s are more “holistic” (considering the whole person – body, mind, spirit and emotions) or old stereotypes that osteopathic physicians must have been rejected by traditional medical schools (not true), very few patients know how a D.O.’s training might shape their health care. One of the most searched questions on Google about D.O.s – who have had full rights to practice medicine in the U.S. since 1973 – is whether they are physicians. (They are).
During Dr. Christina Weaver’s career as an osteopathic doctor, she has been mistaken for a “bone doctor” (orthopedist), a homeopath (an alternative healer with no medical degree) and a chiropractor (also no medical degree).
The difference between a D.O. and M.D. used to be far more obvious. In 1874, when a Civil War physician, Dr. Andrew Still, created osteopathy, it was meant to exist in sharp contrast to the harsh mainstream medical practices of the time, which included bloodletting and prescribing toxic doses of mercury. His philosophy asserted that most ailments were a result of misalignment within a person’s body, mainly in the spine, that he could heal by physically adjusting the bones and joints rather than prescribing medications. News quickly spread of Dr. Still’s “miraculous” healing abilities.
Dr. Still began training new healthcare providers at his school in Missouri, to the outrage of many M.D.s, who aggressively fought to shut down the profession with lawsuits and legislative pressure. For many decades, D.O.s were denied the opportunity to continuing to treat their patients who had been hospitalized where only M.D.s were allowed to treat patients. But over the next century, the rift between the two medical philosophies began to narrow as osteopaths began prescribing medications and practicing surgery. By the mid-1970s, D.O.s were licensed physicians in all 50 states.
Today, the distinction between D.O.s and M.D.s is much fuzzier. D.O.s still attend separate medical schools, but their curriculum covers much of the same ground and many take the same ‘board certification’ exams.
As of 2020, D.O.s and M.D.s attend the same residency programs, where doctors get hand-on training in their chosen specialty. Research has found no significant differences between the professions when it comes to hospital readmissions, death after hospitalizations, surgery outcomes or other patient metrics.
While a D.O.’s more holistic approach to care, asking about a patient’s life stressors or nutrition might once have distinguished them from their M.D. colleagues, today that general characteristic has faded since now M.D.s also recognize that social factors and lifestyle can shape a person’s health.
What has remained distinct is where D.O.s work: disproportionately in rural areas and in primary care practices. Today, nearly 60% of D.O.s are primary care providers, far greater than those with M.D.s and osteopathic medical schools produce many more rural doctors than M.D. programs. The reason for this difference may depend on whom you ask. One explanation, often offered by M.D.s is that primary-care training programs have higher acceptance rates than those for higher-paid specialties, like surgery or anesthesiology, and jobs in rural areas are less competitive.
But many D.O.s say that caring for communities that have been historically neglected by the medical establishment is a central part of the osteopathic philosophy.
As the field of osteopathic medicine has expanded, more and more D.O.s seem perfectly content to not stand out from the crowd. They just want to be physicians.
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This overview of two different – but today very similar – career paths has essentially been plagiarized from an article well written by Teddy Rosenbluth, published 7/22/25 by The New York Times. Since this overview was prepared solely to inform students pondering their future careers via free access to a website which produces no financial benefit to its creator / editor, the editor felt free to follow the lyrics of the late Tom Lehrer, who wrote and sung the words deemed relevant to this educational effort when this editor realized he could not possibly improve upon the original version: “Plagiarize, don’t shade your eyes!”
