03/24/2023    Rich Hofacker, DPM

APMA Board Certification Summit (Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD)

In the late 1980s, I became board eligible.
However, I never had quite enough cases to sit for
certification. I was very fortunate to be
grandfathered into my area hospitals to enable me
to practice what I was trained to do. When I had
the appropriate number of cases, I was told by (at
that time) ABPS, that I could no longer sit for
certification examination, which never made sense
to me.

Now we have a battle between ABFAS (the old ABPS)
and ABPM, which has divided our profession and
made us a laughing stock in the medical world. No
one wins in litigation. What is needed is
negotiation, but both sides have to be willing to
come to the table and negotiate in good faith. We
need to one board that can be agreed on by all.
Perhaps, ABFAS (ABPS) needs to look into the
mirror. How can ABFAS be proud of the fact that
the pass rate for the rear foot boards in our
third year podiatric residents is about 30%? This
is diabolical.

Today's Podiatric residents are highly trained,
intelligent physicians. However, when some test
questions are ambiguous, this is not acceptable.
How can the some of the correct answers be
dependent on the part of the country from which
you obtained your training? When the orthopedic
residents have an examination pass rate of about
90%, perhaps the Orthopedists have come to
conclusion that the more Orthopods that are board
certified and that are on hospital staffs, only
gives them more influence and power in the medical
world.

The podiatric profession is apparently too busy
with internal strife to realize that we are only
destroying the future of our own profession. So,
many areas of our country are begging for
podiatrists and yet the podiatry colleges are
dealing with a declining enrollment. This is a sad
time for our good and noble profession.

Rich Hofacker, DPM, Akron, OH

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