New to me. I was waiting for my car to be seen and read a Nurse Practitioner Magazine someone had left. It had an article on two women who transitioned from NP to MD. One went the traditional route but as a 49 year old applicant. The other enrolled in this University. Courses are online along with study groups, etc. Clinicals are arranged at local hospitals. The fact that her clinicals were US based and the fact that she choose a less competitive specialty (Family Medicine) helped her to get a match for residency. As part of the program you must pass STEP exams. Does not look cheap but is a route for a non traditional student who must work. My guess would be that as she noted, you would be more successful applying for less competitive specialties. She also probably had a leg up on the STEP exams as an NP.
Nurse Practitioner Perspective from Advance Healthcare Network, for NPs & DNPs ? September 2015 The story of the 49 year old going to med school is inspiring but she certainly came out with some debt.
An interesting choice of accreditor considering that they're Samoan. That won't help you in California, which does not list this institution as approved. And I looked at both the Philippines and Samoa on the list.
Pure conjecture on my part but I suspect she had an easier time finding a place to do her clinicals during medical school because she was already a Nurse Practitioner. Someone without that background might find it more difficult when they show up and say, hi, I am a med student at an accredited foreign online medical school. On the school's stats page it says the average age of a student is 40.
A blog entry I read notes they are not approved in California. The school lists some grads practicing in other states. http://www.nptomd.org/graduates.html The photos are probably the actual physicians since the one on the right is the NP from the NP magazine article. I guess it offers a flexible alternative.
Oceania and founder/CEO Taffy Gould were discussed at length here seven years ago: Medical School Now Possible via Distance learning! At that time, it was written that the cost was $113,000 plus the required travel to Samoa.
If I did my Common Core math correctly, the current cost is approx 127,000. Pricey but I suppose when some of Walden's (and other for profit) vanity doctorates are in around 75,000 plus, it is not horrible. A caution for anyone is that foreign medical school grads do not have an easy time of it or at least used to not have according to things I read on the doctor forum and elsewhere. Residency in some fields is very competitive. I think the grads highlighted probably had an advantage securing clinicals due to already being in a US based medical field. The attraction of this route was probably flexibility. It is not dissimilar to what I understand of Waldens NP track (online with local clinicals).
