01/16/2025    Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD

RE: Why The Podiatry School Applicant Pool is So Small (Elliot Udell, DPM)

Is it? Probably, with 37 DO schools now open in
the US and Caribbean medical schools on the
rebound after COVID to more than 50. Some
Caribbean schools will accept just about anyone
with tuition and boast a 95% Step 1 USMLE pass
rate. They can make that claim because they only
certify their better students who have a 95%
predicted pass rate based on NBME practice tests
to take Step 1. In most Caribbean schools a high
percentage of students are foreign. When I was in
Riyadh opening a medical school there, the country
of 35,000,000 had one American trained podiatrist
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia which had a population of
5,000,000. Saudi Arabia is rampant with type 2 DM
and this gentleman was revered for saving limbs
instead of amputating.

AACPM states there were 1000 applicants to
podiatry schools for the 2023-2024 academic year
and 711 students matriculated. That’s a 71%
application to white coat ceremony success rate.
Not bad but it would be interesting to look at the
rejection rate both ways. Schools rejected how
many applicants were accepted to one of the
colleges and how many students rejected us. MCAT
scores were 20 points higher for students accepted
into MD colleges. GPAs for students accepted into
MD schools were 3.8 and for podiatry schools 3.1.
What I would like to know is if podiatry schools
are given access to all schools where MCATs are
sent for a particular student, and if so, publish
that data.

By the time I reached the age of reason ,I knew
I’d been to a pediatrician, a dentist, a surgeon
and had been given injections by different nurses.
I knew I’d been put to sleep by someone who
dripped ether and made me sick as hell when
someone took out my tonsils. The closest I got to
podiatry was sticking my Buster Brown clad feet
into a machine that showed the bones in my feet
and assured my parents there was enough room
between the edge of my big toe and the shoe. I was
fascinated to wiggle my toes and see them in real
time while standing on the box.

On “take your kid to work day,” I took my younger
sixth-grade daughter to the OR. After watching me
on the first case she spent most of the day with
the anesthesiologist and couldn’t be less
interested in the saws and drills I was using.
She’s a CRNA today and the pay is outrageous for
four days a week work and one Saturday call every
three months. But she knows what we do and told me
she didn’t want to be on call, miss dinner, come
in for trauma. She never mentioned anything about
a “lesser degree” or professional politics as a
reason not to choose podiatry.

By the eighth grade, both our family doctor and
dentist were talking me into their respective
professions. Both talked about the upsides.
General Surgeons were often family doctors who
just happened to deliver both my mom and me. So
naturally he stressed the diversity of his
practice and how he knew the whole family, inside
and out. The dentist stressed the fact that when
he was done, he was done for the day and rarely
got called after hours. He spent weekends on his
boat or golfing. Neither ever mentioned any
downsides.

But the point is I was continually exposed to what
they did. I can remember going to the physician’s
office accompanying my mom and sister. He stuck me
in his office and gave me an anatomy book to look
at. The dentist did the same thing on a visit to
his office. In high school they began to talk
about salary. I don’t know if they ever used the
word rich but by the cars they drove, vacations
and recreations, I just figured it was adequate to
support a nice living.

I was also introduced to an optometrist, and an
optician who needed someone to dispense and fit
glasses. It was some part-time work. The
optometrists let me test patients for glaucoma and
color blindness. They taught me how to use an
ophthalmoscope and pushed me to OD school. There
was a family practice physician and a dentist in
the building, but they weren’t very interested in
having me shadow them.

There was also a podiatrist in the office complex,
and I took the initiative to visit him. He did
some minor surgeries in his office and let me
scrub in on some. I think that sold me on
podiatry. I didn’t fill out an application until
July of the year I entered, got interviewed
quickly and moved to Cleveland. I was prepared to
wait another year working as an optician before
the MD, DDS cycle for applications started but I
really liked what I saw with this gentleman named
Jerry Cashen, DPM.

Some years ago, we ran into each other at a
seminar. He said he’d followed my career and was
impressed with all I had accomplished. It was
because he had been so nice to me and very
positive about podiatry and generous with his
time. When I could come to his office, he always
took me with him to see his patients and arrange
his surgeries so I could scrub in. But, it was
just pure luck that I found him.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. Exposure.
How many kids have a foot problem that requires
being seen by a professional? Grandma either said
they were growing pains you’d grow out of, or you
were just a clumsy kid, and you’d eventually quit
tripping over your own feet. Unless I was in a
crisis, I never wanted to see a doctor of any
kind, but I had to see the family doctor and
dentist, so I became familiar with what they did,
I was impressed with Buster Brown and his dog
Tige’s machine, but that was it for feet until
Jerry Cashen, DPM.

I can’t recall ever seeing an advertisement on TV
or in print about podiatry. I stumbled on it. We
have a lot of very bright podiatrists out here.
Perhaps they have an idea about increasing
exposure to the profession. Schools have taken the
initiative to staff road races and that seems to
work. What about private practice DPMs. What can
they do? All suggestions are welcome.

od Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD, Columbus, OH

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