I think a good fellowship could be a valuable experience if you want to work for ortho/hospital. ...
...unfortunately the interest on student loans don't care if your in fellowship or not and it'll still accrue
Yeah, it's a valueable exp regardless, but we just aren't vampires that live for 6000 years.
The financial realities have to be considered. Interest compounds fast (either way).
Losing even that 1 year of a 30yr career is impactful (threw up in my mouth saying that, but many MD/DO/DPM do work that long).
Nearly every new grad podiatrist
wants to work for ortho/hospital. They want highest pay possible, more surgery. Few will get those jobs.
And even some of those hired won't like it (will realize how little they make vs MD/DO surgeons, won't like being under crappy admin's thumb, etc). I know plenty of DPMs who've left ortho and hospital jobs. Some of them are burnout, just not the cases they wanted, rough rural area, whatever.
Maybe a fellowship increases the avg DPM's chances for ortho group job from 3% to 4% and hospital job chance from 8% to 11% for most grads. Dunno.
For
elite residency grads, maybe those chances were ortho group 6% to 8% with added fellowship... and hospital job 31% to 39% chance. Who really knows? They are not as high of chances as they were decade or two ago. Demand is met. But we do know the impactful podiatry fellowships (now watered down) tend to pick their fellows from
great residencies. So, the whole point is - and always has been - to
get the best residency possible. Then pass Abfas (esp if you are going for employed jobs).
...So, the moral of the story is that,
for podiatry, fellowship does NOT make up for a crummy/mediocre residency.
It simply cannot, and that's because good fellowships don't take grads from low end residencies. As
@DYK343 said above, there is nearly always a DPM behind the scenes for any hospital job (even VAs and seemingly obscure hospitals). Nearly always. The create-a-job hospital podiatry jobs (cold calling) were more common years ago, but those mines are largely tapped. All hospitals' HR and admins have been called, re-contacted, tried again by different grads a year or two later (or tried by community/staff DPMs in the area if admin/CEO changes). Those DPMs in charge of the hiring and filtering CVs when the hospital actually does hire know which residency programs are good and which are a toilet paper residency certificate; they will check logs and call residency directors on any DPM who's a possible hire if they have half a brain (they usually do, if they are working there).
Fellowship will mean a good bit to ortho PP groups (they have tons of interest/apps, even more that most hospital jobs), but those will also be controlled by DPMs who know our training and want top programs. It's rare they're even advertised as there are so few jobs like that for DPMs; they're typically just filled by letters or phone calls to top podiatry fellowships/residencies. The big PP ortho group in my state has hired 3 DPMs in the past 10yrs.... all tip top fellowships, and all tip top residencies before that (their first DPM, who one of them replaced, was tip top residency). I refer to them fairly often and are glad we have ppl doing big cases well. But again, the mediocre residency/fellowship just gets your app tossed out - if they ever took public ad/apps at all.
In PP podiatry, we all know fellowship means nothing. As
@msion said, podiatry (and most MSG) have fairly little demand for complex surgery. It's not very profitable. They want collections, likeable doc. If anything, the fellowship was making up for bad residency or will mean the grad expects unrealistic pay/surgery.
🙂
One thing no one's mentioned: if you want a cushy University job, fellowship is basically a prerequisite...
Sure, but again: it's not just "want" those hospital jobs.
What are the serious chances of actually getting them? Even VA jobs are fairly hard to get now with saturation of surgical DPMs.
...Chance with a mediocre residency? Mediocre residency + mediocre fellowship? With a good residency? Good residency + good fellowship?
The fellowship is very often a sunk year if the residency wasn't good/great... and these days, it could be sunk regardless (many good fellowship grads in PP/PE).
(and to bffr, we all know that most "university" jobs for podiatrists are basically sniffing wounds, inpatients with PAD, amps and pus at a name hospital... rare exceptions where univ DPM is actually in ortho dept and gets some good trauma/recon stuff)
