What is a DO, and how does it differ from an MD?
By: Andrew Slattengren and Emma Walytka
Titles are helpful because they create easy shortcuts for, well, complex definitions, roles, education level, or even career pathways. It’s vital to reflect on the day as a time to recognize those individuals who have chosen to devote their lives to bettering the health and well-being of our communities. Counting the specialties you and your family have seen over the years of receiving care can seem infinite, with over 130 medical specialties and sub-specialties, yet many professional titles are often grouped together.
As a pre-med student, knowing the different functions, education level, residential training, and differentiations between different types of doctors is important in informing your future career path.
Often, two types of degrees, DO (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) and MD (Doctor of Medicine), are often considered equivalent, yet discerning what makes them different by looking at what each emphasizes in approach is important in informing what path is best for you.
In this blog, we bring back a special guest, Andrew Slattengren, DO, who was featured in last year’s March issue, speaking about his experience with burnout.
Joining the University of Minnesota North Memorial Family Medicine Residency faculty in 2011, Slattengren, DO, is a founding member and remains active with Family Medicine Midwest. Selected as a Top Doctor by Mpls. St.Paul Magazine each year from 2018 to 2026. Dr. Slattengren is also a former president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians.
The Pulse: What are the key differences between a DO and an MD?
Dr. Slattengren: First of all, I need to emphasize that DOs and MDs are viewed equally when it comes to state licensing boards and hospital credentialing committees. Essentially, they have the same education level, the same residency training, and provide the same service to our healthcare system as practicing physicians.
This being said, Osteopathic medicine has a tradition of taking a philosophy and practice of whole-person care. This includes an emphasis on prevention and wellness that promotes the body's natural tendency toward health and self-healing. The whole-person approach includes considering the patient’s connection of mind, body and spirit in delivering care and utilizing our hands to diagnose and treat illness and injury. This utilization of hands is a distinct therapeutic called Osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT).
The Pulse: What factors led you to choose Osteopathic medicine over Allopathic medicine?
Dr. Slattengren: During my gap year after completing my undergraduate degree, I was shadowing a physician in St. Paul. Upon arrival at his office one afternoon, his nurse informed me that he had to run to the hospital to see another patient and that I was going to be shadowing his partner. I was ushered into an exam room where the physician was rotating the torso of a patient who was lying on the exam table. After a few moments, the physician backed away from the table and asked the patient to stand to do some range of motion testing. The patient bent side to side and then leaned over to touch his toes. He exclaimed, “I haven’t felt this good, ever!” I was standing near the exam room door, wide-eyed, when the physician walked past me, saying, “That was OMT, I’m a DO.” I didn’t know what any of those letters meant, but at that moment I realized that I wanted to add that treatment modality to my doctor's bag of therapeutics so I could provide a more holistic care to my future patients.
I interviewed at both Allopathic and Osteopathic medical schools, and after my interviews, I decided that Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) was the right fit for me and my partner. At the time, LECOM was located entirely within one building. My first 2 years would be located at that site, and then I would be able to continue the clinical years 3 and 4 entirely in Pittsburgh. I had family living in that area at that time, and my partner had been accepted to a professional school in Pittsburgh.
Overall, it wasn’t about DO vs MD. Instead, DO school made sense in my social situation, with the added benefit of providing me with training in OMT.
The Pulse: What personal values or skills do you believe are most essential to being successful in this field?
Dr. Slattengren: As with most healthcare fields, wanting to provide care for people is an essential value. In both Osteopathic and Allopathic medicine, this includes partnering with patients as you care for both physical and mental health. You really have to listen to their descriptions of what is going on in their bodies and be willing to explore therapeutic options that take into account their whole person.
The Pulse: What are some of the osteopathic principles that you facilitate in your practice?
Dr. Slattengren:
When these tenets were first professed by Dr. AT Still in 1874, they were not accepted by the medical establishment as logical. Since that time, and with significant advancements in the understanding of human physiology and psychology, these tenets have become mainstream. Medical providers now accept that physical and mental health can impact each other, the body is capable of amazing healing abilities, and changing the structure or function of a body part impacts the other. I talk about these tenets to many of my patients in my exploration of their illness and therapeutic discussions.
I actually had a patient last week telling me about how their back is hurting after a recent ankle injury and then said, “I know, the body is a unit and structure and function are reciprocally related.” I explored how that was impacting their work, mood, and other social functioning. Only by addressing those aspects can I really understand what is going on with my patient. Sure, I could have simply treated the ankle injury and back pain, but then I would have been missing out on the larger picture of my patient’s wellness. I bring that approach to every patient I am fortunate to care for.
The Pulse: What does it mean to you to be a physician who aims to assist the body’s natural healing forces rather than solely addressing symptoms?
Dr. Slattengren: For me, this means I can focus on the entire person in front of me and consider how I can assist in improving function and wellness and not just decreasing symptoms. I still have the ability to utilize all of our medical advancements and current tools with the addition of the healing touch of OMT. I use OMT as an adjunctive treatment - meaning I use it in addition to standard treatments. OMT has benefits in many conditions. For example, treating patients who have back pain with OMT leads to increased functional ability, decreased pain, less use of medications, and increased patient satisfaction.
The Pulse: How do you see the future of the road to becoming a DO evolving?
Dr. Slattengren: Honestly, this will evolve right along with MD school admissions as it has for the last couple of decades. I don’t have any magical insights as
to how this may change. What I can tell students is that they should rely upon trusted sources when seeking information. This includes the PreHealth Student Resource Center and reputable sources like the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine.
The Pulse: What does a “day in the life” look like for a DO? What are some of the most rewarding moments you have experienced?
Dr. Slattengren: Just as with any physician, there is no single cookie-cutter “day in the life”. Osteopathic physicians are currently employed in every medical specialty throughout the United States and a day in the life of an academic family physician (like me) looks extremely different from one of my DO colleagues who is an ophthalmologist, a pulmonary intensive care physician, or general surgeon.
In addition to the patient relationships that I have been fortunate to form as discussed previously, educating other providers on the benefits of the Osteopathic approach to medicine has been extremely rewarding. I have been lucky to teach practicing physicians, resident physicians, medical students, and undergraduate students and have even branched out to athletic trainers. Providing these health professionals with Osteopathic tools to improve the care they provide for their patients has been a big part of my academic career.