01/22/2025    Steven Spinner, DPM

Why Podiatry School Applicants Remain Low (Kathleen Neuhoff, DPM)

Kudos to Dr. Neuhoff’s post. When I had the
opportunity to address the APMA House of Delegates
as president of ABPS, I argued against the
homologation of our residency training model. We
are not a surgical specialty…we are a diverse
profession which has foot and ankle surgery as one
of our sub-specialties. When I was done with my
presentation, I was approached privately by who if
I remember correctly was the executive director at
that time. He confided that I presented a strong
argument but the APMA had to protect the “grass
roots “podiatrists, and the profession believed
that all podiatrists, regardless of training, had
a right to do foot surgery. I remember asking him
if he had a daughter, and if he did, would he
rather a doctor from my training model or his do
her surgery. He leaned in closely and said, “well,
yours of course, but I can’t tell anyone that.”

So there are 2 issues. The first is that, as Dr.
Neuhoff said, that not all of our graduates either
want to be “surgeons” or have other talents which
do not translate to the operating room. The second
issue is that program directors are being forced
to share a diminishing pool of resources and
divide them “equitably” among all residents in
their program. This only serves to diminish the
training for those residents who truly have the
desire to take their training forward and deliver
a quality result for their patients, and force
other residents to meet minimal activity volumes
or they can’t graduate.

So, in my humble opinion, everyone loses. The
resident who could have benefited from additional
cases, the resident who had no desire to do
reconstructive foot/ankle surgery and was forced
to do those cases, and most importantly the
patient, who is being denied the DPM with a more
intensive training experience. I do, however,
disagree with Dr. Neuhoff on one point. I do
believe that a minimum of 3 years of residency
training should continue to be mandatory. But it
should be up to the discretion of the program
director and the desire of the resident to dictate
the allocation of the program’s resources.

Steven Spinner, DPM, Plantation, FL

There are no more messages in this thread.