Student Showcase

MAPS Osteopathic Education Series: Kelly Scruggs, M.P.H., OMS III

Through a YouTube series titled “MAPS Osteopathic Education Series,” Kelly Scruggs, M.P.H., OMS III, hopes to expand education around osteopathic medicine and bridge the knowledge gap between D.O. and M.D. programs to dispel myths about osteopathic medical education.

To watch the MAPS Osteopathic Education YouTube series, viewers must first take a short pre-assessment survey before getting access to the YouTube playlist.

Read the Q&A Interview with Kelly Scruggs, M.P.H., OMS III

Q: Where did the idea for the MAPS Osteopathic Education Series come from?
A: It came from a desire to increase minority involvement in medicine. And I feel osteopathic medicine in particular … We don’t have enough African Americans applying to medical school. And that is because we don’t have a lot of African Americans in pre-med programs. And that stems from the lack of support and access to be able to get to these [pre-med] programs and have the right influence … I think it stems from less knowledge about the profession … I know there’s a lot of myths that are out there regarding the profession. Maybe there’s a lack of understanding of what [D.O. students] are and all the [skills] we possess, and maybe people think that we’re not as qualified or as licensed as M.D. doctors. So we want to dispel that myth.

Q: Can you tell me about some of the content you plan to cover in the video series?
A: For this first episode, we’re covering [joint motions] and then the planes of motion. We’re covering osteopathic tenets and philosophy … We’ll talk about our founder, Andrew Still, and just a little background and history of osteopathic medicine. Then we also cover different myths and misperceptions of osteopathic medicine. The second, third and fourth episodes have a myriad of different demonstrations and testimonies from students. They’ll be demonstrating different [osteopathic manipulative medicine] techniques on either mannequins or volunteer students … they’re going to demonstrate techniques like muscle energy, they’re going to do suboccipital release, and they’re going to do different soft tissue techniques. One student is going to do a high-velocity, low-amplitude treatment … The rest of this series is pretty much going to be all the key demonstrations and testimonies of how [OMS II through OMS IV students] have been in the clinic and seen [osteopathic manipulative treatment] done or had OMT done on themselves or performed OMT on actual patients in the clinic, and [we’ll] talk about that testimony and the effect that it had.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: Medical students have … put in a lot of work to create the series and give [students] a good impression of what we stand for. They’re all real stories and all from the heart. So I just want people to learn from it … I just hope that it serves as a source of knowledge and a source of education and is an interest builder, because the main goal is to increase minority involvement and minority applications to osteopathic [medical] schools. So hopefully this sparks a fire and gets people interested, and it encourages people to apply to medical school.