NIAGARA FALLS — One of the first lessons learned by students of osteopathic medicine involves the yellow pages.

They are asked to pull a hair from their heads and place it in the middle of a thick open phone book.

Then, they are told to turn the page and see if they can feel the hair beneath the single page. When they can, they are asked to turn more pages until they can no longer feel the hair.

That’s one of the ways the students are taught how their  fingers can obtain information, according to the director of the new osteopath residency program at the Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center. The use of touch is something that distinguishes doctors of osteopathy from traditional medical doctors, said Dr. Laurie Kilbury-Taylor, director of the program. Osteopaths get the same training as MD’s but get an additional 200 hours training in touch their patients as a diagnostic tool, she said.

“From the first day of medical school you are touching another body,” said Kilbury-Taylor. She explained that eventually students learn to feel things they might never have thought were perceptible when they place their hands on a patient’s body.

For example, students learn that skin texture can change. By placing a hand on someone’s flesh they are taught to detect illness by whether the skin feels warm, sweaty, stick or boggy and water-filled, she said.

“DOs all have manual medicine as a tool to diagnose and treat their patients,” she added.

The new osteopathic residency program at the Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center is part of the hospital’s two-fold mission to teach and to serve, according to Joseph Ruffalo, CEO.

“The residency program is our farm system for recruiting doctors,” he said, noting that the hospital hopes that once new doctors are trained they will remain in the region to practice.

However, many potential patients are still confused about the difference between a DO or doctor of osteopathy, and an MD or medical doctor.

“There’s a lot of education that needs to take place in what we do,” said Dr. Robin Spence, a resident in the program. “People ask, are you a real doctor?” she said. “I don’t mind.”

Spence was a speech pathologist working with stroke patients before she decided to follow a dream and become a DO. She choose osteopathic medicine because when she watched the MDs and the DOs dealing with her stroke patients, she found the DOs treated the whole patient rather than just the illness.

DOs have traditionally concentrated on wellness rather than simply treating disease, but these days medical doctors are also becoming more concerned with enhancing wellness, according to Kilbury-Taylor .

“Nowadays both allopathic (traditional MDs) and osteopathic doctors are moving towards wellness and maintaining health as opposed to just healing disease. We embrace the fact that we’re becoming more alike,” she said.

Osteopathic medicine was created in the mid-19th century by a man named Art Still, based on the belief in the body’s inherent ability to heal itself once its pathways are opened through the manipulation of bones and tissues, improving  circulation and correcting mechanics.

“Using your hands, to me, is getting back to traditional medicine, where you actually use your hands to heal,” said Dr. Janet Kong, a resident in the hospital’s program from Orlando, Fla.

The touching is something that also appeals to many patients.

“I like DOs. They are my preference,” said Barbara Porto, who attended an open house recently of the hospital’s new Summit Family Life Center at 6943 Williams Road, where the DOs from the residency program will be seeing patients.

Porto, retired from a career in hospital administration at Children’s Hospital, also sees a chiropractor and a massage therapist to maintain her health.

“I’m used to being touched and manipulated,” she said. And the preventative care seems to work for her.

 “I tend to not believe in sickness,” she said, noting that her only problem is, “I’m extremely healthy,” which makes it harder to maintain a relationship with a doctor.

The new residency program, which currently has six residents, is affiliated with the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and students come from the college to learn from the resident doctors.

As more DOs practice in the Niagara Region, patients will become more familiar with exactly what they do, said Kilbury-Taylor.

“We the same as the doctors you’ve always seen,” she noted. “We just get a little more training in touch and physical diagnosis.”