recidency required?? (going into ND after MD)

[bloh]

Lets see, i've helped type 2 diabetics reverse their diabetes through a though nutritional, supplementation and exercise strategy.

 

 

That's exactly the type of thing an MD would recommend as well. Being an MD isn't all about drugs, as the OP would like everyone to believe.

 

The MD + ND concept is asinine. The two are about as mutually exclusive as you can get and their ideologies clash at the root level. Allopathic medicine is all evidence-based, while naturopathic medicine gleefully rests on the lack of it.

 

edit: Oh and others have already stated the legal implications with doing this. If you have an MD, you must practice by currently accepted standards. I'm not sure what the legal implications of just having an MD (and advertising it) but practicing solely as a naturopathic doctor.

[aaronjw]

That's exactly the type of thing an MD would recommend as well. Being an MD isn't all about drugs, as the OP would like everyone to believe..

 

maybe physicians are starting to change a bit but i've encountered more than my fair share that simply want to push a drug onto a problem because lets face it when you have limited patient time available its hard to truly help.

 

Then there's also the other fact that a lot of people dont want to put in the effort and life changes required to help themselves as well.

 

Double edge sword i suppose.

 

I'd contend that a large percentage of the population tend to think of Doctors as drug pushers. Again, its a double edge sword as which came first - chicken or the egg?

[thebouque]

I'd contend that a large percentage of the population tend to think of Doctors as drug pushers.

 

They think of Doctors as saviors, heroes, half gods.

[scissortail]

I won't question the OP's motivation for pursuing both the MD and ND. But you made the comment that you've never seen a person having a ND and a MD (essentially any "recognized" medical degree). I'd just like to say that in my class, there's this lady with a ND and is now pursuing the DO (you know, the other native medical degree indigenous to North America ). It was actually pretty awesome as during lecture once in a hall of 350+ people, the prof showed us the picture of a green leafed plant, said it was used to make quinine and asked us the name of that plant (he honestly was not expecting anyone to know that). Then the lady immediately shouted out "CINCHONA TREE!!"... It was one of those WTF, HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT moments, and it was awesome.

 

Also, I have heard of DO family doctors with previous ND degrees who have practiced as family doctors for years and years. It is in fact a way to validate your views on Naturapathic medicine if you are able to get a "recognized" degree in medicine and then practice. But then, you MUST have a ACGME/AOA residency. The said doctors were totally anti medication, even antibiotics and always went for natural remedies, whatever they are, as I'm too ignorant to know.

 

I personally haven't met anybody who had both, but then again I don't think I've had as much exposure to the health profession as you . As I mentioned, I understand why somebody with ND would want to pursue an MD or DO, such as the woman in your class. However, I don't understand why anybody would want to do it in the reverse order (MD/DO then ND).

[Pantaloons]

If you ultimately don't want to practice medicine, don't apply for medical school.

[rmorelan]

If you ultimately don't want to practice medicine, don't apply for medical school.

 

The OP I am sure considers practising naturopathic medicine to be practising medicine (not that of course everyone on this forum would agree) . All these contrasting definitions of things...

 

Hippie_Chick in Canada under our system, how much to do you believe you can integrate them? I am worried that the system hear is very incompatible in some ways to what you may be attempting, unless there is some specific areas of alternative medicine you focus on.

[dokta]

I feel like a lot of people come here having made up their mind, and looking for someone to support their views.

 

I also feel like OP wants to get an MD to grant their ND some legitimacy. I think they answered their own question in that.

 

There are, of course, values to the naturopathic approach, and drawbacks to the allopathic approach. Regardless, the fact that the OP thinks they'll need an MD to be able to be a legitimate ND kinda says it all.

[A-Stark]

not necessarily, the a priori assumption that pharmacotherapy and surgery is the cure for every ailment is also pretty asinine, it's also asinine to make presuppositions about things you propose ignorance of. Bottom line is that there are good naturopathic treatments, and bad naturopathic treatments, the same goes for allopathic medicine; allopathic fundamentalists who claim that if naturopathic medicine worked, it would be used, miss out out on the business and politics of medicine. in the end all i'm saying is that each paradigm have their own strengths and weaknesses, an i can attest to this, at least in psychiatry, where i have a breadth of knowledge of efficous "naturopathic" substances and often find myself educating clinicians about things they'd never heard of. Many of these substances have clinical trials backing them up but are largely unknown to the psychiatric community due to the conveniently pharma funded cme nights and other biased educational practices.

 

And whose assumption is that? There are as many things that are "treated" via "watchful waiting" or "conservative management" (or simply lifestyle interventions, avoidance of risk factors, triggers, etc.) as anything else. Peddling vitamins and homeopathy is not practising medicine and certainly isn't evidence-based.

 

maybe physicians are starting to change a bit but i've encountered more than my fair share that simply want to push a drug onto a problem because lets face it when you have limited patient time available its hard to truly help.

 

Then there's also the other fact that a lot of people dont want to put in the effort and life changes required to help themselves as well.

 

If they're following the guidelines for, say, hypertension or DMII, they will not go immediately to medication - unless things are that poorly controlled at first or early presentation.

[apache]

many people with hardline anti-naturopathic ("of any kind" beliefs).

 

some vitamins, amino acids, and basic sugars etc are very efficious in treating disease, i.e. inositol powder for depression and other ssri responsive disorders or n-acetyl-cysteine for obsessive compulsive disorder... kava kava for anxiety... or niacin for lipid disorders

 

anything that is evidence based has to have the intrinsic profitability motive (patentability) to run expensive studies which precludes evidence accumulation. that's why we're not using ketamine infusion for resistant depression now, but instead trying to create a novel ampa antagonist (one of the characteristic that differs between ketamine and memantine (the latter being not particularly "nature worthy" for treating depression), which is an nmda antagonist used in alzheimers to stop excitotoxicity as well as ocd and other neuro/psych disorders) which will patentable and make billions, ketamine is dirt cheap, doesn't cost much to infuse at sub-anasthetic doses once a month, but of course the characteristic that it gets people a little high is unacceptable, so we need to create a new 30 billion dollar drug

 

And whose assumption is that? There are as many things that are "treated" via "watchful waiting" or "conservative management" (or simply lifestyle interventions, avoidance of risk factors, triggers, etc.) as anything else. Peddling vitamins and homeopathy is not practising medicine and certainly isn't evidence-based.

 

[The Ace of Spades]

To answer the original post (without going into the ND vs. MD debate), residency is required to practice medicine as an MD. You could do whatever you wanted to after med school and you would still have the MD credential, but you would not be licensed to practice.

[NLengr]

You would need to check with the college to figure out if you could display your MD credentials without having a medical lisence/being part of the college. That may be a legal issue too. The college is pretty protective of the public role and image of physicians. You could get brought to task about it/sued.

[garret9]

I love the good ol' black vs white arguments...

Sometimes in the world there are grey areas.

 

In my opinion, with the "western world" being what it is (beurocracy, legalistic, etc,etc), allopatric medicine is what it is and will be (but obviously get better and better with research/technology/etc). The system is flawed, of course, but has evolved accordingly to best fit our society.

 

Yes, allopatric medicine uses scientific evidence to prove it's efficiency rates (not all at 100%). Yes, naturopathic medicine has points where it is right, and points where it is wrong. Yes, these practice overlap in many areas. Yes, there is proffit to be made in our western world. Yes, there is a dump load about us, health and the world that we have yet to discover.

 

I'm neither making an argument for or against either side, but I find pure ignorance is distasteful.

 

Can you really lump sum all MDs as pill pushers working for big pharma? Look how hard some "premeds" and MDs struggle to help people to the best of their ability. Look how intelligent and streetwise many "premeds" and MDs are. Can you really simply state they are all pawns to an industry?

 

Can you really say that corperations (ew, I'm starting to sound like those hippies on that South Park episode) and the profit system of the "western world" has no influence? Although not a perfect example for drugs, look at olive oil. It's not the only oil that has roughly the same nutritional value and possitive affects for health but we all know of it because a representative for multiple major olive oil companies (LOL them oil companies again!) was able to influence American government (kind of an interesting story). It's not neccessarly the healthiest, most cost efficient of all oils but it is the most known for it's healthy properties due to well placed lobying, education and advertisement (not dissing olive oil though; I love that stuff).

 

There can be legitamecy on both sides of the story. Sometimes the truth is in the middle; sometimes the truth can lean far on one side. This never means that the otherside is completely wrong.

 

PS. Sorry for the horrible spelling/gramar...

[mavrik13]

You would need to check with the college to figure out if you could display your MD credentials without having a medical lisence/being part of the college. That may be a legal issue too. The college is pretty protective of the public role and image of physicians. You could get brought to task about it/sued.

 

You can still display your MD without being a part of the college - I know a few prof's that don't do clinical work who do this (the licence fee is pretty high).

[NLengr]

You can still display your MD without being a part of the college - I know a few prof's that don't do clinical work who do this (the licence fee is pretty high).

 

Are they members of the college though? I also expect the response to a research scientist who doesn't see patients would be different than the response to a clinical ND displaying MD to gain legitamacy.

[aaronjw]

Are they members of the college though? I also expect the response to a research scientist who doesn't see patients would be different than the response to a clinical ND displaying MD to gain legitamacy.

 

This is true. I wouldn't be overly thrilled by this as a patient.

[rmorelan]

This is true. I wouldn't be overly thrilled by this as a patient.

 

well that is the point I guess - they cannot see patients. Even if they attempted to restrain themselves and only approach things as a naturopath the college still won't like it. It just wouldn't work.

[peachy]

There are numerous MDs who practice using combined allopathic and naturopathic treatments. There's a huge range of how people choose to combine these. I can think of one family doc who basically runs a usual family practice with acupuncture added in. I can think of another family doc who now treats chronic pain only, and uses only complementary/alternative treatments, and so does not bill OHIP at all.

 

In Canada, these folks will mostly have done an MD and a Family Medicine residency, followed by additional training in complementary and alternative medicine. There are lots of training courses out there to learn the particular modalities you may be interested in.

 

To the OP, it is probably worth your time to track down some of these folks and see if you can talk to them about ways to set up the kind of career you are interested in.

[honeydue2000]

thanks to everyone who posted constructive informative answers. I realize I have a lot of instrospection to do on my motives and values in life and to determine whether I want to purse an MD ORRRR and ND... not both... at least that seems to be the most obvious conclusion from everything everyone has said

[apache]

Exactly, nothing is ever black or white. I would myself actually say I take on a more allopathic viewpoint, but there's also lots of good naturopathic techniques as well (along with a lot of crap).

 

There can be legitamecy on both sides of the story. Sometimes the truth is in the middle; sometimes the truth can lean far on one side. This never means that the otherside is completely wrong.

[apache]

the funny thing is if you have an md and nd but held a nd license, the college of physicians and surgeons couldn't touch you since you don't hold a medical license (meaning they have no jurisdiction over you, having an md doesn't intrinsically give the college of physicians any power over you or your actions, holding a medical license does), as long as you're not claiming to be an allopathic doctor and instead acting as a naturopathic one (with a naturopathic license) you would be on the legal end of things (which is a completely separate branch than the college of physicians) because then you wouldn't would be practicing (allopathic) medicine without a license, you would be practicing naturopathic medicine, and your treatment may be guided by some principles you picked up your md (like a naturopathic doctor who also had a physiology degree and used that information to help guide naturopathic treatment), making the md simply an educational degree rather than a professional one. anyhoo...

 

well that is the point I guess - they cannot see patients. Even if they attempted to restrain themselves and only approach things as a naturopath the college still won't like it. It just wouldn't work.

[NLengr]

It's not the fact you have a college lisence that would give then power, it's the fact that they have the legal right as a profession to control the use of the term medical doctor/physician. And they will act to protect it. That's why I suggested checking to see what the story with displaying an MD credential would be in this situation. It would be a pretty big waste if you did all that work to get an MD solely to enhance credibility only to get slapped with a lawsuit for displaying it (because the college feels it gives a false impression that you adhere to "allopathic" medical standard).

 

It's the same principal that governs other professional terms. A dental hygienist can't advertise themselves as a dentist, a construction worker can't call themselves an engineer, and a payroll clerk can't say theyare a CA. Each respective association will act to protect it's name. The person doesn't need to be a college member to get into legal trouble with them.

[apache]

actually, having md on display on a card or anything simply designates that you received the degree in question, something like: frcpc or general practitioner/family doctor/family practitioner would be suggestive.

 

the term "doctor" is a protected professional designation restricted to certain professions, whereas "md" isn't a protected professional designation, it's an earned degree. referring back to the use of the term doctor, in certain provinces, naturopathic doctors are allowed to use the term if they prefix doctor with "naturopathic", so:

 

John Doe, ND, MD, BSc

Naturopathic Doctor

 

or in other provinces:

 

Doctor of Naturopathy - Manitoba.

Naturopathic Physician - Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, British Columbia,

Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine - Ontario, British Columbia

 

so while it technically might confuse people unfamiliar with the educational system, it's still legal, technically, lol

 

 

It's not the fact you have a college lisence that would give then power, it's the fact that they have the legal right as a profession to control the use of the term medical doctor/physician. And they will act to protect it. That's why I suggested checking to see what the story with displaying an MD credential would be in this situation. It would be a pretty big waste if you did all that work to get an MD solely to enhance credibility only to get slapped with a lawsuit for displaying it (because the college feels it gives a false impression that you adhere to "allopathic" medical standard).

 

It's the same principal that governs other professional terms. A dental hygienist can't advertise themselves as a dentist, a construction worker can't call themselves an engineer, and a payroll clerk can't say theyare a CA. Each respective association will act to protect it's name. The person doesn't need to be a college member to get into legal trouble with them.

[NLengr]

It may check out ok I agree. But I just think the smart thing to do would be checking with the college regarding what their position is prior to spending the 150k and 4 years on the MD.

 

Even if it reads as legal to us non-lawyers, that doesn't mean they wouldn't challenge it in court to try and establish some kinda ruling about it. And that could cost you tens of thousands in court costs. Better to be safe than sorry in my opinion.

[TheEmeraldTablet]

I don't know anything about degree requirements but I would assume the job market/prospects are really good.

 

A guy I know practices another form of alternative medicine all around Europe and pretty much has a monopoly on the market in many areas just because there are so few others in his field.

 

Needless to say he's a multimillionaire and that too as a doctor in Europe.

 

If I were you I would do the ND and save yourself 4 years and thousands of dollars. Use that time and money to develop a reputation and a large practice.

[leviathan]

many people with hardline anti-naturopathic ("of any kind" beliefs).

 

some vitamins, amino acids, and basic sugars etc are very efficious in treating disease, i.e. inositol powder for depression and other ssri responsive disorders or n-acetyl-cysteine for obsessive compulsive disorder... kava kava for anxiety... or niacin for lipid disorders

Maybe this is not done/taught in Canadian medical schools, but niacin is standard of care for treatment of dyslipidemia in the US, especially problems with HDL. But further to that point, you should check out the AIM-HIGH clinical trial for some disappointing news about niacin.

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/may2011/nhlbi-26.htm

 

And my take on this whole issue: There definitely is a bias towards expensive drugs when there may be untested products on the market that work for common medical conditions like hypertension, diabetes, coronary disease etc. I think naturopaths are a great added resource to look into these things for patients, but they lack the education to see patients as their primary care providers, nor should they be the sole provider of care for chronic disease for the same reason.