06/20/2025    Lawrence J. Kansky, DPM, JD

Updating Podiatric Medical Education (Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD)

While I have never met Rod Tomczak DPM, MD, EdD, I
fully support his opinions about our podiatry
profession, that he writes about in this forum.
From my perspective, Dr. Tomczak speaks the truth.
It is unfortunate, that because he appears not to
be politically connected, and because he exposes
what is actually happening at our podiatry schools
and in our profession, he gets irrationally
attacked over and over again, by other writers to
PM News. What a shame.

When I attended podiatry school at what is now the
Temple School of Podiatric Medicine, (formerly
PCPM), on a full National Health Service
Scholarship, from 1979 to 1983, I did everything
right. I served a one year residency, became board
certified by ABPS, became a fellow of ACFAS, and
in 1993 was elected Chief of Surgery at St.
Joseph's Hospital. However, my educational
experience and training was nothing close to that
which my wife and two (2) daughters received in
becoming non-podiatric doctors.

Many of my podiatric teachers and clinicians were
quite intellectually inferior. For example, I had
a psychology professor who invited students to his
office to discuss the wrong answers they chose on
his exams. After one exam, I went to this
professor' s office and he told me two (2) things:
first, that I knew the correct answers to the
questions I got wrong but I just did not want to
pick the correct answers, and second, that I
needed to get down on my knees in front of him and
become " born again"! I ran away as fast as I
could!

Another day, I had an experienced podiatric
orthopedic (stupid term) clinician, a licensed PA.
podiatrist, to oversee me for a patient I had who
was scheduled for a casting for orthotics. I
proceeded to cast this patient as I was taught, in
a non-weight-bearing neutral position. Then as
required, I brought the created plaster casts out
to this esteemed clinician for evaluation. This
licensed podiatrist told me my casts were
"horrible" and not in neutral position, so go back
and do the casts again, which I did. He told me
these 2nd casts were better than my 1st casts but
still not good enough, so I was instructed to go
back and take casts for a 3rd time.

However, this time, I chose to hide in bathroom
and not do a 3rd casting because I felt this duly
licensed podiatric clinician had no idea what he
was doing. After about 15 minutes, I took my 1st
casting out to this clinician to be evaluated,
(that he already said were horrible), and this
time he said these casts were "excellent"! The
only thing I learned was that this podiatric
clinician was an idiot.

Also, during my time at PCPM, there was a guidance
counselor, who made male students strip down to
their underwear while he was counseling them.
This was common knowledge. How was this okay?
Unfortunately, there was and students still tell
me, much wrong with podiatric education and
podiatric practice. So, now it takes 7 years after
4 years of college to become an office-based
podiatrist. This is ridiculous. This time period
should be reduced down to the same as dentistry,
optometry, veterinary medicine etc.

The number of podiatry schools should be reduced,
and podiatry schools should only hire the very
best educated and trained podiatrists and
professors, to prevent against the harming and
disillusionment of students.

As an attorney, past and present podiatric
students have contacted me for advice. For the
past decade, I have been an invited lecturer in
Hershey Medical School's Law and Medicine class,
where I teach 4th year medical students how to
avoid legal trouble that they can find themselves
in, through no fault of their own. I tell them my
personal story of being charged with I crime I did
not commit, and how this experience propelled me
through law school, enabling me to graduate with
honors in just 2 years.

Like Dr. Rod Tomczak, I have contacted some big
shot podiatrists and podiatric residency programs
to offer my perspective and help, with no
response. Our podiatric profession is doomed if
it continues to refuse to face the truth and not
do everything possible to improve. Politics is
okay for interdisciplinary purposes. But politics
should not play any role in the education or
training of future podiatrist. Every podiatric
student deserves to be respected, treated fairly,
well educated, and most importantly always told
the truth. (Wasting money to create a marketing
video is not the answer, as pre- med college
students are not stupid).

Thank you again Dr. Tomczak. I am proudly on your
side, and look forward to reading more of your
transparent, very reasonable, and truthful
opinions.

Lawrence J. Kansky, DPM, JD, Kingston, PA

There are no more messages in this thread.