The State of Osteopathic Physicians in Orthopaedic Training and Academic Practice

There are many reasons why prospective medical students may choose osteopathic medical schools, including geography, familiarity, lifestyle choices, and a focus on the musculoskeletal system, including osteopathic manipulative medicine. However, osteopathic medical schools have several potential disadvantages for students wishing to pursue an orthopaedic surgery residency, including the lack of a home department and residency program, less research exposure, and decreased opportunities for away rotations compared with their allopathic counterparts. Moreover, many orthopaedic surgery residency programs do not consider interviewing or ranking osteopathic candidates and most residency programs do not have any osteopathic residents. Consequently, osteopathic medical students have decreased match rates compared with allopathic students, and this trend is expected to worsen over the next decade. Even for osteopathic students who successfully match into orthopaedic surgery residency, there is decreased opportunity to pursue several orthopaedic subspecialty fellowships. For osteopathic physicians who wish to have an academic career, additional barriers are faced, including being less likely to be hired as residency program faculty or to participate in academic meetings and journal leadership. There are opportunities to improve success, by enhancing mentorship and sponsorship for osteopathic students and physicians pursuing academic careers in orthopaedic surgery.