{"items": [{"author": "Alexander", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112848664856303870204", "anchor": "gp-1355237979097", "service": "gp", "text": "There is a comparable degree in psychology (\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Psychology\n), but my impression has always been the psychiatrists have to go to med school because they can prescribe heavy-duty drugs. Dentists or dental surgeons and optometrists may be able to prescribe drugs, but I'm not sure it's at the same level, and my impression is that they may also have to pursue special extra training in order to do so.", "timestamp": 1355237979}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1355240556334", "service": "gp", "text": "@Alexander\n\u00a0my understanding is that a PsyD is most like a PhD in psychology, and both are psychologist degrees. \u00a0Psychologists can't prescribe, while dentists, podiatrists, and optometrists can.\n
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\n(I'm not sure there's a distinction over whether drugs are \"heavy duty\"; I think DMDs, ODs, DPMs, and MDs are always supposed to only prescribe medicines appropriate for conditions within their specialty.)", "timestamp": 1355240556}, {"author": "Martha", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/318230501623770?comment_id=318381681608652", "anchor": "fb-318381681608652", "service": "fb", "text": "I currently work in an oral health program that is part of a public health program and I think it complicates matters greatly that dentists and doctors have such different training because they frequently fail to understand or prioritize the ways in which their work overlaps. Oral health has a really hard time being recognized by the medical and health establishments (which I differentiate from each other) because it is associated with dentistry, which is mostly considered teeth, when, in actuality, oral health can be associated with much more, including pregnancy outcomes, diabetes risk, educational attainment, nutrition and healthy development, risk of cardiovascular disease, and lots of other more mainstream health topics. I wonder if there would be less differentiation between oral health and \"health\" if dentists and doctors trained together.
(And as an aside, I have heard optometrists referred to as \"not ophthalmologists\" because they can't do as much and podiatrists referred to as \"not smart enough to get into med school\" so while they do have their own specialized programs, I'm not sure they're as respected as regular MDs/DOs.)", "timestamp": "1355263569"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1355462229697", "service": "gp", "text": "It seems to me that we'd get more cost effective medicine if there was more specialization. It costs money to teach every doctor all that stuff that may or may not pertain to their specialty. That's not to say there's 0 benefit to them learning it, but I suspect the balance right now is that the costs outweigh the benefits.\n
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\nThe tricky part of this of course is that the human body is a very complex system with lots of inter-connected subsystems that make specialization challenging. But right now, it seems like (in the US at least) medical costs are a bigger issue than medical outcomes.", "timestamp": 1355462229}]}