04/21/2026    Lawrence Oloff. DPM

Podiatric Musings (Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD)

I have enjoyed PM News over the years. Barry Block
has done an amazing service for our profession. I
am sure it is no simple feet (purposeful
misspelling) to find contributors. As a result,
some topics get discussed over and over again. The
DO degree is one such topic. I enjoyed this in the
beginning and while I appreciate Dr. Tomczak’s
passion for this path, maybe we can move on from
this discussion? There is barely an issue goes by
without Dr. Tomczak’s gloom and doom predictions.
Maybe Dr. Tomczak is right, but more likely he is
wrong as podiatry has marched forward as many have
posted. The profession barely resembles what it
was when I was a student. He does point to a
critical concern- student recruitment.

I think Dr. Tomczak’s suggestion to poll incoming
students is worthwhile. Maybe this information
already exists. My unofficial poll, from talking
to students and residents over the past forty plus
years, is that most choose podiatry because they
or a family member was exposed to podiatry as a
patient. I do not remember anyone saying they
chose podiatry because they could not get into
allopathic medical school. I am not saying that
doesn’t occur, but I suspect it is not a major
reason. I think this is an exposure issue. When I
was working at one of the colleges, we often heard
from healthcare providers that they knew little to
nothing about podiatry.

Why is this important? Many reasons. We all can
appreciate the influence that social media has on
the public. Negative posts prevail on what I would
label as the Yelp effect, where a disproportionate
amount of negative viewpoints get posted over
positive. People are more likely to share
criticism. This is a well-supported fact by many
studies. This has been called “Negativity Bias”
and has been explored by many psychologists, one
being Daniel Kahneman. PM News may not realize
that negativity overshadows positivity on their
site. Am I the only one who has noticed this? PM
News may have more impact on student recruitment
than may be appreciated. I have heard this from
many educators.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Repetition does not
transform a lie into a truth”. This holds true
with statements too. Instead of just posting
repetitive complaining, let me offer a solution.
How about posting other pertinent topics. Let me
share one topic and maybe others can do the same.
I would love to hear how people feel about
research in podiatry. Why isn’t there more? Why
aren’t the colleges contributing more? Does
research uplift the image of the profession? Why
are only 9 out of the 35 articles in the last
ACFAS journal written by podiatrists, while the
rest by foreign orthopedists? PM News has so much
more to offer. Let’s move on.

Lawrence Oloff. DPM, San Francisco, CA

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