What is a D.O.?

What is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine?

A doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) is a physician licensed to practice medicine, perform surgery and prescribe medicine.

Like all allopathic physicians (MD), osteopathic physicians complete at least four years of medical school and choose to practice in any specialty of medicine.  However, osteopathic physicians receive an additional 300-500 hours in he study of hands-on manual medicine and the body's musculoskeletal system.

Osteopathic physicians hold to the principle that a patient's history of illness and physical trauma are written into the body's structure.  The osteopathic physician's highly developed sense of touch allows the physician to feel (palpitate) the patient's 'living anatomy' (the flow of fluids, motion and texture of tissues, and structural make-up).