Osteopathic Graduate Medical Education (OGME)

The education received in an osteopathic medical school is undergraduate medical education, and the training provided in an internship or residency program is graduate medical education.

After graduation from an osteopathic medical school, training may continue in a graduate training program called a "Residency,"
the first year of which may be called an "Internship."

Graduate medical education typically focuses on one field of practice. Examples include family medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, preventive medicine, dermatology, radiology and many others.

Historically, osteopathic physicians were required to complete a general rotating internship as their first year of graduate medical education prior to being able to choose a specialty field. This traditional rotating internship, also called an osteopathic internship, provides broad training in family medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, pediatrics, and other fields of medicine as determined by the program or the trainee’s interests. These osteopathic internships are still available and encouraged.

In applying for a residency, osteopathic medical school graduates can pursue one of the following three options:

1. Apply to an osteopathic first-year residency program that is linked to further training in primary care or a sub-specialty field.

2. Apply to an osteopathic internship program that is not linked to a specificresidency, and that may or may not have further residencies for continuing training.

3. Apply to an MD/ACGME approved residency. The osteopathic profession has residency programs in all of the medical and surgical specialties. Additionally, graduate training programs in manual medicine, joint family medicine/emergency medicine, proctology and others are available only in the osteopathic profession.

Successful completion of a residency program is required for specialty board certification.

How OGME Differs from MD/GME

All osteopathic graduate medical educa-tion programs are part of an Osteopathic Postdoctoral Training Institution, also called an OPTI. OPTIs are partnerships among a teaching hospital, a medical school and other medical training facilities including outpatient surgery centers, physician offices, county health departments, rehabilitation centers and other community-based health care providers. The OPTI is a way of linking health care providers across the community with the intention of training physicians to be patient-centered.

Both osteopathic and allopathic programs work through hospitals because of Center for Medicaid Services (CMS) rules regarding government support and payment for graduate medical training. However, unlike many allopathic programs, osteopathic programs typically provide more out-of-hospital training opportunities.

Residency Match

Graduating osteopathic medical students apply to the hospitals and programs that offer their preferred internship/residency program. Following interviews that provide students and programs with information about each other, students submit their choices, ranked from their first choice through all the programs they would feel comfortable attending. Programs also rank the applicants they would like to have working in their programs.

Applications for the osteopathic match are administered through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS).
Applicants and programs "match" based on the desire of the student to go to a specific residency, and the desire of the residency to have that student in their program.