lack of residency spots for pod grads?

roadwarrior said:

so here i am, happy to go on interviews when i hear that in 5 years or so there will be too many pod graduates and not enough spots? whats the point of being a pod if that is the case?

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I think that is "if trends were to continue". However, as residency is now required by law and has been for the last little while, this is being more closely monitored. At least, I hope it is! Maybe some APMSA people can give us somewhere info on the subject.

jonwill said:

I think that is "if trends were to continue". However, as residency is now required by law and has been for the last little while, this is being more closely monitored. At least, I hope it is! Maybe some APMSA people can give us somewhere info on the subject.

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All of the major players (i.e. APMA, AACPM, COTH, CRIP ETC.) are very awared of the discrepency. NO one wants to see a repeat of too many graduates. While it is an area of concern, right now all is good and everyone is working to keep it that way.

Dr. Gangrene said:

All of the major players (i.e. APMA, AACPM, COTH, CRIP ETC.) are very awared of the discrepency. NO one wants to see a repeat of too many graduates. While it is an area of concern, right now all is good and everyone is working to keep it that way.

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Good to see you back Dr. Gangrene! I was getting lonely w/o you. It's a long time till jan 24. I need some of that arizona heat to keep me alive out here in the cold.

I had the opportunity recently to talk with Dr. Robertozzi. We specifically asked about this. He stated that many residencies have the ability to increase the number of residents they can take on. This, he said, should offset the number of residencies that have closed or may close. He was very optomistic about the outlook for this situation.

PickledEels said:

I had the opportunity recently to talk with Dr. Robertozzi. We specifically asked about this. He stated that many residencies have the ability to increase the number of residents they can take on. This, he said, should offset the number of residencies that have closed or may close. He was very optomistic about the outlook for this situation.

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I take this answer to mean that they are not really watching the situation and they are willing to water down people's educations to add spots to maintain the number of positions for residency.

If there is no plan to limit students and maintain residency spots then there is no plan.

PickledEels said:

I had the opportunity recently to talk with Dr. Robertozzi. We specifically asked about this. He stated that many residencies have the ability to increase the number of residents they can take on. This, he said, should offset the number of residencies that have closed or may close. He was very optomistic about the outlook for this situation.

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I have a difficult time believing this. Most residency programs are already taking as many as they can and should take. Why would they be taking less in the first place? Every once in a while, a program will continue to grow and add hospitals/surgery centers (as mine did) and they will increase the number of slots. But this is a process that can sometimes take over a year (as it did for my program). And while it could possibly offset the number of residencies that have closed, it definitely won't compensate for huge increases in class size.

This is a true shame. I fought this when I was a student. I guess I assumed that some progress had been made but it doesn't appear so. These are the numbers that I was given as a student and I do believe them to be accurate:

When the residency transition is complete (to the PM&S format), there will be roughly 360 PM&S-36 slots and 160 PM&S-24 slots. You do the math.

I agree with Krabmas, there needs to be a definitive plan in place to prevent this sort of thing. This sounds like a resolution for the AMPSA!!!

krabmas said:

I take this answer to mean that they are not really watching the situation and they are willing to water down people's educations to add spots to maintain the number of positions for residency.

If there is no plan to limit students and maintain residency spots then there is no plan.

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Agreed, in my opinion the schools need to step it up in the admissions process (as has been mentioned a b'zillion times in these forums) or the residency spots should remain the same (or both).
Those who narrowly pass school and simply go through the motions will not get spots. This may encourage/discourage certain behaviors. And in turn increase the quality of education for us all, it will also increase the quality of Physicians that the podiatry profession can offer.

There is currently an APMA Task Force to monitor the number of students being accepted by the colleges and the number of residency positions available. The podiatric medical profession is working hard to ensure that there are more than enough residency positions for every graduate and there are currently a number of initiatives to do so. The Council on Podiatric Medical Education (CPME), for example, has received 5 applications in the last month with 6 new entry level positions (18 new positions overall). They also are evaluating 3 provisionally approved programs this fall with an additional 7 entry level positions (21 positions overall).

Be assured that the APMA, the CPME and the AACPM are all diligently working on this issue. Your future is in good hands.

I posted about this at length in a different thread...
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=463179 (post #37)

The US population is growing, so podiatry does need to grow also to get patients the services they need. The hard part is just deciding how fast podiatry needs to grow and then matching residency spot numbers in line with those projections. The final step that causes all the trouble is then matching the number of graduates with number of residency slots.

Yes, the schools could be more consistent in number of students accepted each year; a couple schools have been growing very fast recently. The APMA could mandate how many each school may accept per year (and they already do to my knowledge). However, even if we know and regulate how many students matriculate each year at each school, the pod programs' high and variable attrition rates still make it hard to predict graduating class size. Unless we find out a way to get a very good prediction on graduating class sizes, there will always be at least a slight residency slot surplus or shortage every year. It's never going to be a perfect 1:1 match of grad:residency spots.