As the graduate medical education landscape shifts, culminating in 2020 with the completion of the transition to a single accreditation system for graduate medical education,
1 osteopathic medical students participating in the National Resident Matching Program will not have the option of residency spots that the American Osteopathic Association has historically provided.
2 In this increasingly competitive environment for residency program positions, osteopathic medical students may wonder how they can stand out during their core, elective, and audition clinical rotations so that residency program directors will view them as desirable candidates and want them to rank their program first in their chosen specialty.
This is a seminal moment for the osteopathic medical profession. It is incumbent for teachers of osteopathic medical students, whether they are core faculty members at colleges of osteopathic medicine or preceptors at clinics or hospitals, to provide strong role modeling and guidance for osteopathic medical students that will encourage them to be emboldened to accentuate the unique attributes that an osteopathic physician (ie, DO) can bring to patient and community health care. This confidence will help them to shine during their clinical rotations.
In 2014, the Association of American Medical Colleges established core entrustable professional activities (EPAs) for entering residency with the intent to guide medical schools in competency-based preparation of students for their first day of residency (
Table).
3 In 2016, the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) published “
Osteopathic Considerations for Core Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) for Entering Residency,”
4 which aligns each core EPA with specific osteopathic core competencies.
5 It is imperative that these competency-based osteopathic considerations are emphasized by teachers of osteopathic medical students by modeling behavior, such as taking medical histories, performing physical examinations, and treating patients, and by fostering the concept that, as a product of an osteopathic education, these students bring distinct value to any residency program. In ensuring that osteopathic medical students confidently display their osteopathic distinctiveness and understand that they bring unique contributions to preceptors when offering the osteopathic approach to patient care, teachers of osteopathic medicine will be assisting them in matching successfully to their desired residency programs.
To encourage osteopathic medical students to develop their osteopathic clinical reasoning skills and spotlight osteopathic principles and practice in alignment with the osteopathic considerations within each EPA, teachers must continually advise them to take the following actions: