A Place of Healing: MSUCOM’s Student Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine Clinic

By Megan Rao
raomegan@msu.edu

March 25, 2008

Second-year MSUCOM student Krishan Angrish practicing his OMM skills on second-year Jon Decker.

Room D200 in West Fee Hall is a place of healing, learning, giving and compassion. Room D200 holds the Student Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) Clinic, a free treatment center focusing on diagnosis and solutions made through the method D.O.s, or osteopathic physicians, call manipulative medicine.

Osteopathic manipulative medicine is described by second-year student Krishan Angrish as a method in which doctors “[use their] hands, looking at the body, looking for irregularities.” OMM-practicing physicians are famous for their hands-on, know-the-patient approach to medicine, a style that allows for the quick building of trust between patients and practitioners, and a heightened sense of communication between the body and the healer. Patients are often thrilled with the good results of treatment at the clinic and the student doctors’ understanding of the body through the art of touch.

Treating ailments ranging from the flu to back pain to earaches, the students and the overseeing faculty physician at the clinic welcome patients of all walks of life. The free clinical appointments can last anywhere between ten minutes and two hours, as the student doctors place great importance in talking with their patients for as long as necessary to understand the scope of the problem.

Patients at the clinic vary from students whose necks have cramped from studying to underserved populations from the Lansing area that cannot afford the expensive drugs prescribed to them by their doctors. Often after OMM, problems that mystify other physicians and elude treatment by chemical medicines are fixed. Those who have enjoyed the high-quality care of the student doctors at the OMM clinic have publicized the clinic by word-of-mouth to the extent that it is now well-known in the community, and many health practitioners in the East Lansing area refer their patients to the OMM clinic.

The Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine Student OMM Clinic can be contacted by phone at (517) 432-4931, or by email at sommc@msu.edu. Appointments can be made by phone and email, and walk-ins are accepted. The clinic is open on Tuesdays from 5 to 8 p.m.