02/11/2026    Lawrence Oloff, DPM

RE: Why Podiatry Should Pursue Broader Licensure Beyond Foot and Ankle Care (Sev Hrywnak, DPM, MD)

Having healthy dialogues is always worthwhile, as
long as it is done in a respectful manner. I
appreciate the posts by Drs. Hrywnak and Tomczak
about a plenary degree. I respect their comments
but I do not agree with them. I use to agree with
these thoughts early in my career. However, I feel
such thoughts are no longer in the best interests
of our profession. I am in the tail end of my
professional life. I have been blessed by the many
positions that fell my way. I have been a podiatry
faculty at a college, Academic Dean, managed a
podiatry program in a top tier medical university,
member/partner in a prominent orthopedic sports
medicine group, podiatry residency director, and
now my last job as full-time faculty in a medical
school. Equally important is that I have been a
private practitioner. I feel qualified to a give
an opinion on these issues.

First a few facts. Podiatry now is not what I
first started in. Those days were fighting tooth
and nail for every inch. Residency training was
all over the place. Some graduates did not get
residences because there were not enough to go
around and did clerkships instead, where they
worked in podiatry offices as journeymen. The
residencies were mostly one-year programs, with a
few that were two-year. Hospital privileges were
not easily obtained and if they were privileges
were pretty basic. Podiatry was not a homogeneous
profession. Contrast all that with now. All these
changes occurred within my professional lifetime.
Pretty amazing.

The plenary license makes no sense to what I have
observed in practice. It sounds a bit like
suggesting a change that results in a “jack of
all trades master of none”. We are specialists. We
just need to be experts of the foot and ankle -
period. Knowing medicine and medical specialties
is part of our training. For example, our
residents do two months of medicine rotation in
their first year and serve in the same capacity as
the medical residents, with their own patients to
manage, under the supervision of the chief
medicine resident just like all the medical
residents. In addition, there is exposure to many
medical specialty areas of medicine I believe they
are equipped with the necessary medical knowledge.

I was in a prominent orthopedic practice for 30
years. Do you think the orthopedists managed their
patients' medical problems? Do you think they ever
took their stethoscopes out? I could go on and on
but suffice it to say that they stayed in their
lanes as orthopedic specialists. We should do the
same. To do otherwise makes no sense. Also, why
would one want to take on that additional
headaches and malpractice risks. This makes no
sense at all.

This all seems like the perennial podiatry
insecurity with their degree. I have heard this
for well over forty years. This is what I learned
and why I have changed my thoughts on this. You
want to be respected, have acceptance by the
allopathic medical world, have patients seek you
out? The answer is simple, just be good at what
you do.
Lawrence Oloff, DPM, San Francisco, CA

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