Nearly a third of American medical students now train for a DO
In the United States, doctors with DO after their names hold the same rights as MDs and train in the same residencies. As of 2026 almost 30 percent of American medical students are pursuing the degree, which began in 1874 with a frontier physician who thought bones held the key to disease.
The Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine is awarded by 44 osteopathic schools teaching at 71 sites across 36 states, and more than 11 percent of practising US physicians hold it. The curriculum mirrors MD programmes: two years of biomedical and clinical science, then two of clinical rotations. The main difference is an extra 300 to 500 hours of osteopathic manipulative technique, hands-on manipulation of muscles and bones that the source describes as pseudoscientific, and most DOs do not use it in practice. Graduates then enter the same internships, residencies and fellowships as MD graduates.
Andrew Taylor Still, a physician and surgeon, launched osteopathy in 1874, naming it after the Greek for bone, which he considered the starting point for understanding illness. On May 10, 1892, he opened the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri, now A.T. Still University. Missouri would have let him award MDs, but, unhappy with conventional medicine's limits, he kept the separate DO. By 1898, when the Journal of Osteopathy began, four states recognised the profession.
Still meant DO as Diplomate in Osteopathy, with the title Doctor of Osteopathy; the longer name Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine came later. At a 1960 conference the American Osteopathic Association resolved to say osteopathic physician and surgeon instead of osteopath, keeping the older words for history and informal talk. A minority of DOs still use them, as does the American Academy of Osteopathy.
The field has split into two quite separate professions. American-trained osteopathic physicians practise the full range of medicine and surgery, while osteopaths trained abroad are non-physician manual therapists whose regulation varies from place to place. The schools' national association, AACOM, released in 2026 its first national review of research at osteopathic colleges, pointing to fast growth in community-focused clinical studies and room for more federal funding.
Source: Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine
