As part of its advocacy outreach, the NBOME considers all of the interrelated organizations which can affect academic healthcare, and, in turn, impact osteopathic students, residents and physicians. Most recently, we worked with Doximity, which is the leading physician networking platform that supports more than 80 percent of U.S. physicians, to improve opportunities for osteopathic students and physicians.
Doximity also serves as an important resource to osteopathic students when they investigate potential residency programs, similar to the AMA-FREIDA or EMRA Match platforms. However, we learned in Spring 2022 that the platform’s Residency Navigator and Insights tool only provided the NRMP Charting Outcomes for MDs and USMLE scores.
We reached out to Doximity co-founder, Nate Gross, MD, who was responsive and deeply committed to supporting osteopathic students and physicians. Before the end of the summer, Gross and his team updated the Residency Navigator and Insights tool, and reiterated their commitment to improving tools for all medical students.
The changes made include:
- A filter for DO students to see COMLEX-USA scores of matched DO applicants per specialty
- Scores page now opens automatically with the DO filter pre-selected for osteopathic students to improve their experience
- Scores page shows the number of DO applicants per specialty and proportion of matched applicants
“We greatly appreciate that a key leader in healthcare network technology has shown their commitment to easing stress and eliminating biases DOs face during the UME to GME transition. We know that our osteopathic students will be overjoyed to hear about this change,” said Melissa Turner, MEM, associate vice president for strategy & quality initiatives. “We hope that changes such as these will inspire other companies that touch medical education to embrace support for osteopathically distinctive licensing credentials.”
The NBOME will continue its advocacy and education efforts to help reduce biases against DOs, level the GME playing field for DOs, and show the incredible asset DOs can be to residency program directors.
If you are aware of any residency programs that appear to dismiss COMLEX scores as part of the application process, please reach out to us at advocacy@nbome.org.