What is Osteopathic Medicine? - Dr. Katherine Martin

Osteopathic medicine is a distinctive form of medical practice in the United States. Osteopathic medicine provides all of the benefits of modern medicine including prescription drugs, surgery, and the use of technology to diagnose disease and evaluate injury. It also offers the added benefit of hands-on diagnosis and treatment through a system of therapy known as osteopathic manipulative medicine. Osteopathic Medicine emphasizes helping each person achieve a high level of wellness by focusing on health education, injury prevention and disease prevention.

Osteopathic medicine was founded in the late 1800s in Kirksville, Missouri by Andrew Taylor Still, M.D., who felt that the medical practices of the day often caused more harm than good. After losing members of his immediate family to meningitis, Still focused on developing a system of medical care that would promote the body’s innate ability to heal itself. He called his system of medicine osteopathy, now known as osteopathic medicine.

Osteopathic physicians, also known as D.O.s, work in partnership with their patients. They consider the impact that lifestyle and community have on the health of each individual, and they work to erase barriers to good health. D.O.s are licensed to practice the full scope of medicine in all 50 states. They practice in all types of environments including the military, and in all types of specialties from family medicine to obstetrics, surgery, and aerospace medicine.

D.O.s are trained to look at the whole person from their first days of medical school, which means they see each person as more than just a collection of body parts that may become injured or diseased. This holistic approach to patient care means that osteopathic medical students learn how to integrate the patient into the health care process as a partner. They are trained to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds, and they get the opportunity to practice these skills in the classroom with simulated patients.

Because of this whole-person approach to medicine, approximately 60 percent of all D.O.s choose to practice in the primary care disciplines of family practice, general internal medicine and pediatrics. Approximately 40 percent of all D.O.s go on to specialize in a wide range of practice areas. If the medical specialty exists, you will find D.O.s there.

While America’s 47,000 D.O.s account for only 5 percent of the country’s physicians, they handle approximately 10 percent of all primary care visits. D.O.s also have a strong history of serving rural and underserved areas, often providing their unique brand of compassionate, patient-centered care to some of the most economically disadvantaged members of society.

In addition to studying all of the typical subjects you would expect student physicians to master, osteopathic medical students take approximately 200 additional hours of training in the art of osteopathic manipulative medicine. This system of hands-on techniques helps alleviate pain, restores motion, supports the body’s natural functions and influence the body’s structure to help it function more efficiently.

One key concept osteopathic medical students learn is that structure influences function. Thus, if there is a problem in one part of the body’s structure, function in that area, and possibly in other areas, may be affected. For example, restriction of motion in the lower ribs, lumbar spine and abdomen can cause stomach pain with symptoms that mimic irritable bowel syndrome. By using osteopathic manipulative medicine techniques, D.O.s can help restore motion to these areas of the body thus improving gastrointestinal function, oftentimes restoring it to normal.

Another integral tenet of osteopathic medicine is the body’s innate ability to heal itself. Many of osteopathic medicine’s manipulative techniques are aimed at reducing or eliminating the impediments to proper structure and function so the self-healing mechanism can assume its role in restoring the person to health.

In addition to a strong history of providing high quality patient care, D.O.s conduct clinical and basic science research to help advance the frontiers of medicine and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the osteopathic approach to patient care. Currently, several national osteopathic organizations are working to facilitate the development of a national center for osteopathic clinical research. This facility’s staff will help enhance osteopathic clinical outcomes research by serving as a national catalyst to develop and conduct multi-center, collaborative clinical research studies. Initially, studies will focus on demonstrating the effectiveness of osteopathic manipulative medicine as it applies to many facets of patient care.

For more information about the history of osteopathic medicine, see the history page