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First Osteopathic Medical Program Outside the United States
Dr Shawn Pourgol, Panama - 2022

First Osteopathic Medical Program Outside the United States

American style osteopathic medical & surgical education is currently only available in the United States. In 2011 I tried to open the first osteopathic medical university outside the United States but was not able to do so for a variety of reasons. Instead I decided to bring European style manual osteopathic education (no surgery, no medications) to the United States and now my university, the National University of Medical Sciences (USA) is the only university in the US offering degree programs in manual osteopathy. Our degree programs are approved by the California University FCE, the International Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, and by the US Council on Osteopathic Manual Practice Education. Alumni can become Certified Osteopathic Manual Practitioners (COMP) in the US. Most osteopathic manual practitioners in the US are my students.
The dream however stayed with me and I worked on it for many years. I am very close to bringing this dream to reality. My lawyers are now in negotiations with a few countries, and one in Europe has already approved our request to offer an osteopathic medical program (DO/MD). I plan to wait until the end of this year and then decide where to place this program and set up the campus. This will be a 100% on-site, campus based program and our graduates will be able to work as osteopathic physicians with similar rights as medical doctors.
We also plan to offer other campus based medical & health programs such as doctor of medicine (MD), doctor of podiatric medicine & foot surgery (DPM), Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD), doctor of physical therapy (DPT), doctor of chiropractic (DC), doctor of occupational therapy (DOT), doctor of optometry (OD), doctor of manual osteopathy (DO) & doctor of naprapathic medicine (DN).
I am so happy that one of my biggest dreams in life is coming true.
Dr. Shawn Pourgol, MBA, DC, DO, PhD
President
National University of Medical Sciences (Spain & USA)