01/02/2026    Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD

Who thinks podiatrists are physicians? National Advertising, That's Who ( H. David Gottlieb, DPM)

Two things happened this week that have led me to
pen this letter to PM News. One was Dr. David
Gottlieb’s December 31, 2025 letter to PM News and
the conclusion that national advertising leads
everyone to believe that podiatrists are
universally considered physicians. The second is
the rediscovery of the August 12, 2021, letter
from Eric Stamps, then Dean of Samuel Merritt,
representing AACPM to the APMA and ACFAS stating
the majority of podiatric deans did not support
DPM graduates sitting for USMLE as part of the
process of becoming recognized as physicians by
the MD and DO professions.

To summarize Dr. Gottlieb’s letter, he states that
because a retired New York podiatrist is featured
in a national advertisement endorsing an OTC
peripheral nerve medication and the advertisement
erroneously calls the podiatrist a retired
physician implies our profession has reached
national physician status and to deny that fact
betrays our lack of confidence in our worth.
Somehow, Dr. Gottlieb concludes our professions
has placed our imaginary inferiority complexes and
insecurities on his shoulders.

Aristotle is rolling in his grave at Dr.
Gottlieb’s attempt at a syllogism that lacks a
middle term but concludes something factually
erroneous because it is against the law to call a
podiatrist a physician in New York. At best, where
allowed states have decided we are podiatric
physicians, not physicians. I can’t recall reading
cumbersome terms such as ophthalmologic
physicians, gastroenterological physicians, or
neurological physicians in any medical literature
when referring to MDs of those disciplines.

The August 12, 2021 letter to APMA and ACFAS is
easier to summarize. The conclusion is AACPM’s
opposition to Vision 2015 and the White Paper
emanating from the meetings. Suddenly we hear from
some of the podiatry deans through Dr. Stamps that
the podiatry curriculum does not support or
prepare podiatry students to take USMLE and to
groom them would take a total restructuring of the
curriculum when historically, podiatric education
thought leaders have declared we are only one
furlong away from a mirror image of the DO
curriculum. The best sentence in this letter
signed only by Dr. Stamps states, without proof,
“Allopathic medical doctors could not pass AMPLE.”
Really? Is it because we feature lower extremity
anatomy and biomechanics sections on AMPLE?
There’s a lot more to all the sections of AMPLE
than that.

These two letters come into play because the
majority of the profession, Drs. Gottlieb and
Stamps aside, want the profession to function with
a DO degree and be correctly called physicians who
specialize in foot and ankle with a plenary
license. Again, the PM News survey bears that out.
Dr. Gottlieb will be correct. Podiatrists will be
physicians. Dr. Stamps, who left academia in
November of 2024 will not have to worry. The other
podiatric deans will not have to worry either.
Podiatry schools as we know them now will be
superfluous. They may still exist and grant a DPM
degree, but the 37 DO schools will offer a DO
degree and swallow up students who would have
attended a DPM school.

Oddly enough, the future of podiatry is predicated
on those 37 DO schools. There will then be a
transitional internship year which will allow for
the DO to acquire a plenary license. I think the
next logical step is a podiatry residency. We have
plenty of podiatry residencies and residency
directors might favor a DO podiatry resident over
a DPM resident, but to succeed, the DPM residency
teachers will have to teach hard. After the
residency, the new podiatrist can opt for a
fellowship in one of the many offered by a single
certifying body in the profession.

We have seen the decline in podiatry students
enrolling in our schools. If private loans will be
required to matriculate and graduate, private loan
sources will favor a DO over a DPM. There is an
assumption that physicians with a plenary license
will earn more than those with restricted
licenses, especially in the early years of
practice.

Will there be two classes of podiatrists? Early
on, yes. Maybe just like optometrists and
ophthalmologists. They have learned to get along.
It whole scenario seems inevitable, not today, not
tomorrow, but it is coming. Thirty years from now,
don’t make me tell you, “I told you so.”

Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD

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