Dear Residency Candidate,
Welcome to the University of Michigan Health-West Osteopathic Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine Residency Program (ONMM). On behalf of the OMM department, I thank you for your interest in the program. You are coming into the residency search at a particularly interesting time. Programs across the country have all transitioned to ACGME residencies. We each seem to have found our own paths. It is good that you investigate each of the programs to find a good fit for the next step in your training. I am honored to have the chance to introduce you to our program. I encourage you to compare all the ONMM programs by browsing their descriptions available on the AAO website.
We have focused on having a close relationship between the FM and OMM department since beginning the integrated FM/OMM program in 2001. Our emphasis has been to offer the resident the chance to find a balance between the frontline, primary care practice capabilities and the specialist, OMM consultative options. The program leads to being dually specialized and eligible to be Board Certified in both.
With the transition to ACGME, there have been some adaptations, but the theme and emphasis remains the same. We still desire to give our residents the full experience and training for Family Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. Residents who wish to have the full experience will start in our FM program but will be “Uber Tracked” in OMM. Effectively, by the end of your FM years, you will have also gone through the first years of the ONMM residency requirements. This includes time in the OMM clinic and as well as inpatient OMM consultations. It will also include regular OMM didactics both within our residency and with our greater OMM neighborhood through Statewide Campus System’s monthly didactics. In your last year with our program, you will finish the ONMM requirements while maintaining a connection to our FM residency.
With this training, you will be ready for frontline patient care, specialty consultation practice, or academic medicine. You will be eligible to consult both ambulatory and hospitalized patients with a wide range of acute to chronic musculoskeletal and systemic issues.
Regarding OMM in particular, the training emphasizes a broad knowledge in OMM approaches and modalities. My hope is to give you a broad enough base that you could teach future doctors in any and all the main modalities taught in our medical schools along with having a good familiarity with emerging modalities and approaches. Once you have tasted it all, you can decide what type of guru you wish to become.
From the connections through Statewide Campus System located at MSU, to the connections at AAO’s annual convocation, to the comradery both within the smaller OMM group and the greater FM group, you are not alone. We are here for each other. Osteopathy has always been a relatively small community, but we are alive, strong, and growing.
Thank you for your interest in our ONMM program at University of Michigan Health-West. I look forward to working with you in the future!
Darren Grunwaldt, DO
Program Director, ONMM Residencies
University of Michigan Health-West