11/11/2020    Lance Malusky, DPM

What best describes your memories about the podiatry school you attended?

My podiatry school experience was somewhat
negative. All in all, a great career maker,
though. I was in the class of 1974 at OCPM. My
colleagues will recall the mini-building on
Cornell in Cleveland. Long and narrow, you could
walk the entire front wall in less than a minute,
yet it held 400+ students and staff! The late
John McCord, DPM was in my class, and our
"documentarian." His iconic drawing of the
faculty-student relationship was a cassette
recorder set on an elementary style school desk
pointed at a suspended TV screen.

Recording lectures was the only way to catch Dr.
Benjo's lists in diagnostic medicine, every item
of which would show up on his tests. My school's
didactic experience was filled with CNC clinics,
where the greatest challenge was applying a
Campbell's-low-Dye strap to everyone. We
otherwise measured x-rays, and processed
urinalyses. Rubber butter and rohadur orthotics
creation were mandatory. Where were the M95 masks
back then?

My 4th year orals were taken in a rattle trap
building next door, with the radiator clanging
like a Steven King movie. I fortunately had a
friend in permanent resident/faculty Dr. Glen
Bredemeyer. We bonded when I taught him how to
pour a Coca Cola on ice without losing the
carbonation! He helped me prep and survive this
orals trial-by-radiator.

In 4 years, I only saw one phenol procedure, and
no bone work; that was reserved for the
residents. The first time I saw any bone work was
in my preceptorship under. Martin Taubman, DPM in
Dayton, Ohio, after graduation. Speaking of
post-graduate programs, there were only less than
50% residencies available for all the Podiatry
schools' students... and 1 year programs. Thus,
not knowing the importance of a residency, and
"politicking" too late, I had to find a
preceptorship.

I am retired now, but I am ABPS Foot and Ankle
Certified through 2023. How did I do this
without a residency, you may ask? That is the
other negative, or lack of experience, from my
podiatry training. Fortunately, the Board
faculty created a very tedious pathway to
certification after graduation. This required
many case studies on-the-fly, performing bone
work and tumor excision in the office under
regional anesthesia, and several Board test
sessions in Chicago. Board "Eligible" and
Qualified" re-testings blurred for 10 years until
I became certified finally in 1993. Somewhere
along the way, I gained enough med-cred to get
hospital privileges. So, as I said, overall
somewhat negative, made up for with the
assistance of many post-graduation DPM
colleagues, and my own business acumen/fortitude.

Lance Malusky, DPM, Dayton, OH

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