Health Care Professionals Group

Should osteopaths take the same exam as medical doctors in order to get licensed?

In some states such as California, osteopaths do not have to take the same exam as medical doctors in order to get licensed. What states require osteopaths to take the same test as medical doctors since essentially they provide the same treatment as doctors and are allowed to do surgery? It is a well known fact that the grade point average of individuals admitted into osteopathic schools are on the average lower than individuals admited into medical schoos.. Wouldn't a requirement that osteopaths take the same exam as medical doctors to get licensed protect the public from treatment by individuals doing surgery that got into osteopath school after being denied into medical school due to too low of a grade point average?

Public Comments

1. I bet that you are going to find a million osteopaths that disagree with your statement about grade point averages. I have known some very good osteopaths, and some very bad ones. I have known some very good MDs and some very bad ones. There are good nurses, and bad nurses. Good PAs and bad PAs. Its the person that difines the practitioner, not the certifying exam or the grade point average.
2. Well you write they provide the same treatment as Doctors but they really can not ,since they have not had their education. Two very separate kinds of professions.
3. The USMLE and the COMLEX are basically the same exam. (like the ACT vs. SAT) And your arguement is flawed, the entrance GPA at my school averages 3.65, the same as the MD schools I applied to. Furthermore, I could have had a 3.0 and a 22 on the MCAT and gotten into a MD school like Ross University or the American Medical school. Furthermore, the term osteopath is only used in Europe, where they are more like chiropractors. Here in the US osteopathic physicians have taken all the same classes as the MD's well as manipulation. Third, if we are such inferior physicians, why are MD residency programs recruiting us, hiring us as directors, and hiring us as professors at their schools? However, I do agree that the whole two test system is stupid. The COMLEX should just cover OMM and be taken in addition to the USMLE. We are all getting the same education (except for OMM) and doing the same jobs, why not take the exact same test? It's all about power, the AOA doesn't want to give any ground to the AMA. Most students would sit for the USMLE if the COMLEX wasn't already required.