My name is Dr. Ian Storch.

I'm a board certified gastroenterologist and osteopathic physician, and you are listening

to DO or do not.

If you're interested in joining our team or have suggestions or comments, please contact

us at DoOrDoNotPodcast.com.

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We hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the DO or do not podcast.

My name is Ben Berg.

I am a non-traditional pre-medical student who originally graduated from the University

of Albany and am now completing my pre-medical education at Hunter College in New York.

In preparation to apply to osteopathic medical school.

This past month, I was lucky enough to attend ACOM's Educating Leaders 2022 conference

in Denver, Colorado.

Attending the conference afforded me an incredible week of lectures, networking, and was overall

a great experience, which I would recommend to any pre-medical student.

Representing the podcast at the conference and being surrounded by so many great osteopathic

physicians and administrators was terrific, and speaking for me personally, this experience

truly affirmed my desire to become an osteopathic physician.

The reason for me being included on this trip as a pre-medical student was that I represent

the pre-medical student's perspective and can share my experience with our pre-medical

listeners who are interested in osteopathic medicine.

And that is what we are going to do on this episode.

Today we are joined by Dr. Helene Cameron, PhD.

Dr. Cameron is the Vice President of Undergraduate Medical Education Services for ACOM.

Dr. Cameron was not only instrumental in inviting us to the conference, she was gracious enough

to join us for this interview.

In the interview, Dr. Cameron offers insight into how ECOMOS, the American Association

of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine Application Service, which is a subsidiary of ACOM, works

to help pre-medical students get into osteopathic medical school as well as providing some crucial

information and dates about the upcoming application cycle.

I hope you find this interview as informative and as enjoyable as I did.

Thank you.

Today we are joined by Dr. Helene Cameron, the Vice President of Undergraduate Medical

Education Services for ACOMOS.

Good morning, Dr. Cameron, and thank you for taking the time to join us today.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me here.

For those who do not know, what is ACOMOS and what function does it serve?

So the ACOMOS system is our centralized application service for all of the osteopathic schools

in the country.

So if you are a student who's looking forward to going to osteopathic medical school, you

would apply through the ACOMOS system.

So for our pre-medical students who are listening, what does the full ACOMOS application cycle

look like and when is this year's application cycle opening?

So the ACOMOS application cycle begins on May 4th of 2022, which is just next week.

And that cycle will go through April of 2023.

It's very important that you look at the Choose DO website to get all of the specific dates

for the comms that you are applying to because some comms have different deadlines than others.

So it's really important.

But the most important thing you need to know is that the application cycle begins on May

4th.

It ends in April 2023, which is when students will be getting notification.

But the sooner you apply, the better because if there's any questions about your application

or anything that needs to be verified, then there's time to do that based on when the

comms that you've applied to have deadlines.

For those who do not know, what is Choose DO and what are some of the services that

they provide?

So ChooseDO.org is a website that has everything you need to know about applying to osteopathic

medical school.

So there's information out there about the ACOMOS system, which is the application system.

There's also a list of dates and deadlines out there.

You will also find information about our Choose DO Explorer, which you can register on.

Once you register, that puts you into our CRM communication system and you'll get updates

and information about things that are going on or information sessions.

But also there's a few tips out there about applying, how to put your application in,

what you should do, those kinds of things.

So it's a very useful tool for anybody who's wanting to apply to osteopathic medical school.

That all sounds terrific.

What seminars and sessions are coming up in the near future?

So we will have two webinars coming up where students will be able to not only ask questions

of me and my team about the ACOMOS application, but they will also be able to ask questions

of comms who are participating.

And so that is an online webinar.

You can find information from ChooseDO.org about how to register for that.

But the dates of those upcoming webinars are June 22nd, 2022 and December 7th of 2022.

Excellent.

And we look forward to those dates.

If you had one piece of advice for undergraduate students who are aspiring to be osteopathic

physicians, what would that be?

I don't know that I would have one piece of advice.

I would probably have a toolkit of things that I would tell them.

Number one, I would say to make sure that you're doing the very best that you can with

your grades.

Number two, prepare for the MCAT.

Standardized tests in general can be stressful.

You may know the information, but once you sit down, just knowing the psychology of knowing

that you're taking a standardized test is so important to the process.

Students get nervous and sometimes don't do their very, very best.

So prepare for the MCAT.

Also spend some time really researching osteopathic medicine, the ChooseDO website and the ChooseDO

Explorer, the comms and what they have to offer.

All of them have a very similar mission, but all of them are very different and there's

a lot of opportunity out there.

And so do not sell yourself short by not doing the research that you need to do for yourself.

Great.

I think that's a great piece of advice.

We have one more question for you and that is, how can pre-medical students interested

in osteopathic medicine get more involved in the DO community during that undergraduate

segment?

Well, I think one of the things that you do, number one, is you need to find out if there

is a pre-SOMA chapter on your campus.

And that's a Pre-Student Osteopathic Medical Association club, organization.

If it's not, you might want to start one on your campus.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing is, make sure you're talking to your pre-health advisor.

I think that that is very important and don't be discouraged if you don't get a lot of information

from your campus.

Again, the ChooseDO Explorer is very, very important.

And then I would also say, and I said this the other day to a student and it was like

a light bulb went off, most people have health insurance.

So look at your health insurance portal and see if there are DOs listed as providers in

your health insurance portal and be proactive.

Reach out to them.

Say, you know what?

I'm a student.

I'm really interested in going to medical school and I'm really interested in being

a DO.

And do you have time to spend some time with me that I could talk to you?

You might not be able to shadow like you could years ago because of HIPAA.

The patients might not want you in there with them when the doctor is talking to them, but

certainly you might find a DO who would love to have a conversation with you about the

profession and about the things that you could do as a DO.

Excellent.

All excellent pieces of advice.

That is actually all the questions we have for you today and we really appreciate you

taking the time.

Thank you so very much.

It was my pleasure.

This concludes our episode of DO or DO NOT.

Send all inquiries, comments, suggestions, and even let us know if there's someone you

want us to interview to do or do not podcast at gmail.com.

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We have plenty of more interviews lined up and we're excited to share them with you.

This is Tianyu Shea.

Thank you guys so much for listening to DO or DO NOT.