Ok, I am in DO school now and had 2 kids before I started. Most people I know had their child between first and second year or at the end of second year. You only have the summer off between first and second year. You do not have the option to take summers off after that. You get a one month vacation slot years 3 & 4. You do your vacation when you have the baby. I would not advise being pregnant and trying to do a surgery rotation - lots of long long hours on your feet. The school I go to is very family friendly and they work with students who are pregnant - you never know if you will have comlications, bed rest, C-section etc. You have to be aware that things happen and not everyone has easy deliveries. A friend of mine who is a DO has her first baby after 2nd year and the second baby right after graduation. In DO school the rotations are fairly laid back where I am. The most difficuly is surgery like I said. Otherwise its just like going to work everyday and I get home usually by 4pm depending on the rotation. I just finished my psysch rotation with a DO who is pregnant with her 4th child and she's just finishing her residency now. It is very possible. The first and second years is classwork and studying so being pregnant would be fairly easy, its finding good childcare and lack of sleep afterward that is the hard part.

feel free to PM me if you have more questions

I'm pretty sure I want to be a DO because I'm a bit on the crunchy side and really like the model of complementary medicine and the Osteopathic view of the body as a whole.

I'm not saying MD's cannot be crunchy because I know a few extremely holistic MD's but I think the DO system is embraces that philosophy.

Additionally, DO schools seem to encourage nontraditional students and, ahem, I resemble that category.

Hi everyone, I am a D.O. F.P. . I graduated from NYCOM in 1999. Good luck to all of you 1st years. Being a d.o. makes you special. embrace it.

I feel I am getting some hope! Is it really possible to practice holistic medicine in today's world of medicine? Can you really treat the root cause of issues? Practice preventitive medicine, still make living, and have balance? I will be overwhelmed with joy if it is really possible! I am currently enrolled in DO school but have had serious doubts about how it compares to the "real" world of medicine, is it really possible?

I will be applying to all of the DO schools east of KCOM next year! I'm excited!

Good evening,

Wow! Thanks for the information about DO's. I am going to check this out. I do believe that you should always look at the person as a whole. I want to be able practice that as a future doctor. Plus I like complementary medicine also. I am taking a course about essential aromatherapy oils. I also plan to take a course about herbs too. At the clinic where I work a lot of patients ask a lot questions about complementary medicine and a lot of doctors don't know. By me taking these courses on my own now, as a future doctor I can answer patients questions about holistic therapies. How many DO schools is there in the U.S.?

Hakeema

I think the number is up to 22 now. Good luck in your quest.

Any practicing DO physicians out there that could share your experience of practicing what you learned in medical school to treat the whole patient? How does what you learned in school measure up with practice? What kind of residency did you do? MD or DO?

I am a D.O. in my 10th year of private practice in family medicine. I did an OMM pre-graduate fellowship as a 5th year of medical school. I only applied to D.O. schools despite excellent grades and MCAT scores. So many people think of D.O. schools as having lower acceptance standards, which is untrue. I know that I have a better retention of my basic anatomy and physiology than my 4 MD colleagues. Whether that is from my D.O. education or my OMM fellowship....who knows. I did not offer OMT as part of my family practice for several years. Manily because I didn't want to treat chronic back pain and worker's comp. I have offered OMT as adjunctive therapy to many conditions: chest pain, reflux, tennis elbow, psoas spasms, headaches, post breast cancer patients, sports related injuries, bronchitis, asthma. It is rarely the only reason I treat a patient.

OMT has it own set of "physician only" CPT codes. These codes are different than the PT, massage and chiropractic codes. Only D.O. and D.O. trained M.D.s can use these codes. They do reimburse and can be another added service in a full practice, like minor surgeries, stress testing, audiometry, etc.