Osteopathic postdoctoral training programs are recognized throughout the United States in federal and state laws, rules and regulations. As the only accrediting agency for osteopathic medical education, the AOA is responsible for developing and enforcing postdoctoral training requirements, policies and procedures in order to ensure the highest quality programs. For a description of osteopathic postdoctoral training structure please refer to the Osteopathic Postdoctoral Training Structure document (PDF147K).

Postdoctoral Training General Requirements and Policy
Documents concerning general requirements and policies applicable to all osteopathic postdoctoral training programs, including the AOA Basic Document for Postdoctoral Training (PDF 804K), can be found by visiting our Postdoctoral Training General Requirements and Policy section.

Internship and Specialty Standards and Workbooks
Specialty specific training standards, inspection workbooks and forms for reporting case load statistics can be found by visiting our Internship and Specialty Standards and Workbooks section.

Program Forms and Applications
Applications and forms for requesting new osteopathic programs or changes to existing ones can be found by visiting our Program Forms and Applications section. 

Fast Finder: AOA Document Retrieval System
The Fast Finder: AOA Document Retrieval System (PDF 296K) contains links to commonly used postdoctoral training documents and web sites.

Osteopathic Postdoctoral Training Institution (OPTI)
An OPTI is a community-based training consortium comprised of at least one COCA-accredited college of osteopathic medicine and one AOA HFAP-accredited hospital. All AOA approved programs must be affiliated with an OPTI.  For more information on OPTIs please visit our OPTI section.

The postdoctoral booklets are in PDF format, which can be opened using Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is a free program that takes a few minutes to download into your computer. If you already have Reader installed on your computer, make sure you're running the version 4.0 or higher.