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Significant growth of osteopathic medical education:

Nearly 4,200 medical students graduated this year from one of the nation’s 26 Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, compared with just 2,536 graduates a decade ago.

However, the number of residency positions has remained the same, and in many specialties has decreased. The AOA is trying to shunt students into their unfilled primary care residency positions. This becomes a potential problem when schools boast to prospective students who are told osteopaths practice in every specialty. What they are not told is some of these specialties only offer a handful of positions. Increasing class sizes and opening new schools has the potential to breed resentment among students, and not a desired enthusiasm for primary care. 

(Source: nevver)

Osteopathic medicine is everything this country wants right now. There is such a zeitgeist of green. First, our logo is green. Seriously though, this movement for organic foods. For healthy lifestyle. For preventative care. The ritual of  physical exam. To be a free agent capable of creating a canvas that facilitates an environment, an organism, a body to heal itself quickly, efficiently, and peacefully. This is what America wants. This is a need. Osteopathic medicine is the best kept secret in healthcare.

medicalstate:

Abraham Verghese: A Doctor’s Touch from TED Talks.

Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional one-on-one physical exam.

“Health is not a commodity. Risk factors are not disease. Aging is not an illness. To fix a problem is easy, to sit with another suffering is hard. Doing all we can is not the same as doing what we should… Doctors expect too much from data and not enough from conversation. Community is a locus of healing, not the hospital or the clinic. The foundation of medicine is friendship, conversation and hope.”

—David Loxtercamp, author of A Measure of Days: The Journal of a Country Doctor, as read in his interview with NPR’s Liane Hansen. (via beingblog)

health-is:

Traditional perspectives on child and family health

Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much  (New York Times)

A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute in Miami has found that a massage from a loved one can not only ease pain but also soothe depression and strengthen a relationship.

The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast.
The above picture is a click through to the NYT article