History of seperate Podiatry Schools!

[cool_vkb]

Yesterday i read that in Europe, some countries dont have Dental Schools. Dentistry is like a speciality after Med school. Similarly Podiatry is a part of Orthopedic department.

Iam just curious, How did seperate Podiatry Schools evolved? I mean Chiropractic, Naturopathic and even DO schools can be seperate because of they have their own Philosophies and theories and are different from Allopathy.

But isnt Podiatry completely in terms of allopathy. i mean we dont have any kind of different theories or approaches. many pod schools are even integrated in Med schools.Then why is it that we have a seperate school. I mean the idea is awesome.it works for me bcoz in that way i dont have to go thru Gynecology and Psychiatry rotations. bcoz they have nothing to do with Podiatry.Then in that case, later one can expect seperate schools dedicated to Opthamology, or Psyshciatry.

But then if we have a school dedicated to a certain speciality only, just as Dentisry has seperated itself from regualar Med school in most countries and we dont find MD's as such solely dedicated to practicisng Dentistry. The practice of Dentistry is only the business of a DDS. And this limits friction between MDs and DDS over who is more trained or who is more capable in treating dentistry related problems and also cuts the economic competition for DDS as they are the only ones in the business.

Then if they wanted to develop a dedicated Podiatry school only for learning F&A. then why didnt they asked that the entire treatment of F & A be given to Pods rather than having regular MDs (F & A orthos) and DPMs treating the patients with same problems.In that DPMs would be like DDS. only medically trained professionals that can treat F & A. then all this superior/inferior complexes and debates who is better or who is more trained between MDs & DPMs wudnt exist. In this way, both DPMs and MDs will never have any problems just as MDs and DDS dont have any friction over scope of practice issues..

The DPM & Ortho (F &A) case is not like Optho and Optometrists. OD's are dedicated to only primary eye care. So ODs and Opthos are at different levels in terms of training and scope of practice (in most cases) and they dont have that problem as such.

But DPMS and Orthos (F &A) do exactly the same thing and have same legal scope over Foot & ANKLE. Its like two people doing a same task and fighting who is more better when both of them are part & parcel of same Allopathic Medicine. Thats why i asked the question!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[gsrimport]

You'll find out if you attend AZPod.

 

[Dr. Gangrene]

You'll find out if you attend AZPod.

Thats good. I was thinking of asking a similar question. I will wait till this fall, when I bask (and fry) in the land of the sun.

 

[Dr_Feelgood]

The problem is he is attending Scholl. I think that many of the pod schools have an intro to podiatry class (obviously AZPod must; so does DMU). If Scholl does not I would be happy to go over the whole histort but it pretty long.

 

[Feli]

The short version:
Podiatry education evolved out of nescessity just like anything else. The allopathic community wasn't really devoting enough time to the foot or possibly viewed it as not needing very much attention, and therefore, a niche was left to be filled. Podiatry has taken up that niche and done an increasingly good job at it.
(for the long detailed version of podiatry's history, search around the net, take an intro to pod class, read Principles and Practice of Podiatric Medicine chapter 1, or talk to an experienced podiatrist).

_____________

As for orthopods being able to "do exactly the same thing," I don't feel that is true. Orthopaedic surgeons who have done F&A fellowship treat the podiatric sports med theatre and bone and joint surgeries similarly to well trained DPMs (debated ad nauseum). However, the entire rest of podiatry (derm, C&C, vascular, imaging, neuropathy, etc) would probably be referred by an orthopod out to dermatology, FP, vascular, radiology, neurology, etc department.

One of my professors suggested that when you want a bunion surgery done, onychomycosis treated, a foot X-ray read, a diabetic foot cared for, or verruca removed, you could certainly go to an orthopod, family practitioner, dermatologist, or radiologist. However, he wisely suggested, "why would you have a general contractor do pumbing when a plumbing specialist is available?" The bottom line is that many condidtions present differently in the foot, and the anatomy is fairly complex because, like the hand or head, there is quite a bit in a small area. It makes sense to me to have specialists who know the anatomy, pathology, biomechanics, etc for that specific area very well and are accustomed to treating it on a daily basis.

 

[krabmas]

Historical Sketch and Summary*

Podiatry (formerly chiropody) may represent American Medicine’s first attempt to create a medical specialty. It is an historical artifact dating back to the birth of modern chiropody/podiatric medical education with the opening of the first U.S. podiatric medical college founded by Maurice J. Lewi, MD in New York in 1911.
* In 1911, the hands and feet were considered the most complicated aspects of the medical profession. The podiatric profession became American Medicine’s first attempt to experiment with specialization. A year later, the Carnegie Foundation funded a comprehensive study of all MD medical schools in the US and published what became knownas the Flexner Report which represented the birth of modern American allopathic MD medical education.
* The AMA used the Flexner Report over the next two decades to close MD diploma mills and pass state legislation that opened up public tax dollars to create standardized modern medical school curriculum.
* The Flexner Report was the basis for gaining the state legislators’ agreement that MD’s legally were recognized as physicians and granted an unlimited scope of practice.
* MD internships surfaced in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but medical specialty residency training did not occur until after World War II with the explosion of medical and surgical knowledge that WWII brought to medicine. Most current MD medical specialty societies were not founded until the 1950’s.
* In 1937, the Illinois Delegation to the American Medical Association House of Delegates introduced a resolution which called on the AMA to take a position that it “…would be unethical for any MD to associate with or teach at a podiatric medical school.” This AMA Resolution was referred to the AMA Council on Judicial and Ethical Affairs “for Study and to be Reported Back to the AMA House of Delegates in 1938.”
* One year later, the AMA Judicial and Ethical Council reported to the AMA House of Delegates, “…podiatrists do practice ‘real medicine’ and provide a needed service that MD’s are too busy to attend to with their patients, unlike other professional quackery professions, such as osteopaths….” Therefore, in 1938, the podiatric profession was deemed ethical and the osteopathic profession was deemed “quackery.” Until 1961, MD’s were told it was unethical for an MD to associate with any member of the DO profession.
* In June of 1961, the AMA’s Judicial Council took an official action…”that it was no longer unethical for doctors of medicine to associate professionally and on a voluntary basis with doctors of osteopathic medicine.”
Not only did the DO osteopathic profession become accepted by the AMA as not being ‘quacks’, they became the first profession other than MDs to achieve an unlimited scope of practice and have full physicians status. In the 1980’s, DO’s were AMA’s number one targeted group of physicians to be recruited into AMA membership.
One key factor in the success of the osteopaths overcoming the discrimination of the AMA occurred in the 1950’s with the emergence and integration of osteopathic and allopathic graduate medical education residency training programs. Medical knowledge exploded with the human carnage of World War II. This growth of medical knowledge necessitated creation of medical specialization to capture and fully utilize this knowledge.
This was accomplished in the 1950’s by the creation of graduate medical educational specialty residencies, medical specialty societies and voluntary medical specialty certifying boards. This proved to be a much more effective manner of managing the explosion of medical and surgical knowledge.
Podiatric Residency Programs Podiatry’s development of graduate medical education residency programs was linked to the medical education process only in recent generations of practitioners. Currently, podiatric residents, just like the osteopathic residents of the 1950’s, are clinically trained in full body systems.
Today’s podiatric accredited residencies require podiatric residents to be rotated through different medical specialty departments so they are trained as full scope physicians, just as MD and DO residents are trained regardless of their chosen medical specialty.
For example, psychiatric MD residents rotate through OBG-YN departments to deliver babies, surgery departments to do surgery, and internal medicine/family practice department to do clinical medicine before they specialize in psychiatric practice.
Podiatric residents have similar rotations through a number of these same medical specialty departments and are required to do a complete comprehensive history and physical examination as part of their accredited training program. (See Council on Podiatric Medical Education 320, Standards and Requirements for Approval of Residencies in Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, page 20, B Assess and Manage the Patient’s General Medical Status, Items 1 – 4)
The average layman or legislator does not understand how the Ohio podiatric scope of practice limits podiatric physicians to using their clinical and surgical skills to treating the foot or ankle by state law (ORC Sec. 4731.51), yet allows podiatric residents to train in full body systems with the need to have the ankle or foot disease or injury triggering their training?
This is because the state law grants podiatry residency training certificates (ORC Sec. 4731.573) which limit the podiatric residents training to the accredited hospital residency program under the supervision of the podiatric residency training director. The statute, however, cites the Council on Podiatric Education’s residency accreditation requirements as the basis for the training certificate.
This allows podiatric residents to be trained in all aspects of the human body, including the ability to perform a total physical examination of patients the same as any MD or DO medical specialties are trained.
Podiatry can be viewed as American medicine’s first attempt to specialize and its last medical specialty to bloom via clinical and surgical graduate residency training programs.

 

[krabmas]

Hey Cool,

please read the above post carefully. It was posted before and you could have searched for it.

I'm not trying to be rude, but many of your questions could be found by doing a simple search.

When you are in pod school are you going to post questions on here or us to answer in regards to your studying or are you going to look the answers up for yourself? If you looked and could not find anything then it is OK to ask again.

 

[Podman]

The problem is he is attending Scholl. I think that many of the pod schools have an intro to podiatry class (obviously AZPod must; so does DMU). If Scholl does not I would be happy to go over the whole histort but it pretty long.

I think all schools have the intro to pod medicine class in first year, feelgood - I don't think i've heard otherwise

 

[cool_vkb]

Krabmas, Thank you ver much for the info. God bless you! that was very informative.

 

[cool_vkb]

When you are in pod school are you going to post questions on here or us to answer in regards to your studying or are you going to look the answers up for yourself? If you looked and could not find anything then it is OK to ask again.

Thats a good idea. I post my daily questions on SDN and you guys can help out. lol!

 

[krabmas]

Thats a good idea. I post my daily questions on SDN and you guys can help out. lol!

It is good I have a sense of humor.

 

[Dr_Feelgood]

What do you mean? I think that cool has a great idea.

 

[krabmas]

What do you mean? I think that cool has a great idea.

Cool - I think Feelgood just offered to do all of your homework

 

[Dr_Feelgood]

Cool - I think Feelgood just offered to do all of your homework

No problem. I haven't taken that crap in years but lets give it a go.

 

[Feli]

...Podiatry can be viewed as American medicine's first attempt to specialize and its last medical specialty to bloom via clinical and surgical graduate residency training programs.

Is it just me, or have other students had the thought that some or even all other medical specialties which are currently under the MD/DO specialty umbrella may stand a reasonable chance of eventually becoming their own graduate medical program in order to increase specialized knowledge and possibly cut down on total school + residency lengths which are becoming fairly obscene?

I realize that it's become quite the tradition to have the first two years of a medical program be extremely challenging as more facts, pictures, and numbers are thrown at the students than they will ever recall. I guess it's basically a philosophy of throwing so much that the critical stuff has to stick in the mind. However, with the exponentially increasing body of medical knowledge (labs, medications, surgical procedures, etc), how long can it keep going with nonspecific MD/DO "general medical education"?

Psychiatry, pathology, OB/GYN, and pediatrics come to mind as a few fields that definetly have their core in general medicine and overlap with other specialties, yet they require pretty specialized knowledge due to a largely specialized patient population.

Maybe it's just a thought I had while studying for my upcoming path II test all day before I had to get to work, but knowing your specialty from the start really does seem to have its advantages. I really key in on things like Buerger's, glomus body tumor, varicose veins, etc which would I would be likely to encounter in my specialty. Of course I learn and remember the presentation of other conditions such as , but let's get real, I'm not going to try to treat giant cell arteritis or even malignant hypertension. Similarly, I wonder how often an OB/GYN uses the gout medication dosages or FHL insertion knowledge which they may have been made to memorize during med school. For me, knowing my future specialty helps me recognize what is critical versus what I simply need to recognize and stabilize until an appropriate referral has been made.

Don't get me wrong, it's plainly obvious that any medical professional has to have at least a general understanding of whole body anatomy, physio, path, etc, but I just think that knowing the specialty early on (instead of wondering what specialty one might be able to get until USMLE scores arrive) would help people focus on what anat/path is the most highly essential to them and their future practice. Just a thought...

 

[Dr_Feelgood]

Is it just me, or have other students had the thought that some or even all other medical specialties which are currently under the MD/DO specialty umbrella may stand a reasonable chance of eventually becoming their own graduate medical program in order to increase specialized knowledge and possibly cut down on total school + residency lengths which are becoming fairly obscene?

I realize that it's become quite the tradition to have the first two years of a medical program be extremely challenging as more facts, pictures, and numbers are thrown at the students than they will ever recall. I guess it's basically a philosophy of throwing so much that the critical stuff has to stick in the mind. However, with the exponentially increasing body of medical knowledge (labs, medications, surgical procedures, etc), how long can it keep going with nonspecific MD/DO "general medical education"?

Psychiatry, pathology, OB/GYN, and pediatrics come to mind as a few fields that definetly have their core in general medicine and overlap with other specialties, yet they require pretty specialized knowledge due to a largely specialized patient population.

Maybe it's just a thought I had while studying for my upcoming path II test all day before I had to get to work, but knowing your specialty from the start really does seem to have its advantages. I really key in on things like Buerger's, glomus body tumor, varicose veins, etc which would I would be likely to encounter in my specialty. Of course I learn and remember the presentation of other conditions such as , but let's get real, I'm not going to try to treat giant cell arteritis or even malignant hypertension. Similarly, I wonder how often an OB/GYN uses the gout medication dosages or FHL insertion knowledge which they may have been made to memorize during med school. For me, knowing my future specialty helps me recognize what is critical versus what I simply need to recognize and stabilize until an appropriate referral has been made.

Don't get me wrong, it's plainly obvious that any medical professional has to have at least a general understanding of whole body anatomy, physio, path, etc, but I just think that knowing the specialty early on (instead of wondering what specialty one might be able to get until USMLE scores arrive) would help people focus on what anat/path is the most highly essential to them and their future practice. Just a thought...

I think that there is a better chance the DDS and DPM with be part of the MD/DO equation before other specialties break off.

 

[krabmas]

Is it just me, or have other students had the thought that some or even all other medical specialties which are currently under the MD/DO specialty umbrella may stand a reasonable chance of eventually becoming their own graduate medical program in order to increase specialized knowledge and possibly cut down on total school + residency lengths which are becoming fairly obscene?

I realize that it's become quite the tradition to have the first two years of a medical program be extremely challenging as more facts, pictures, and numbers are thrown at the students than they will ever recall. I guess it's basically a philosophy of throwing so much that the critical stuff has to stick in the mind. However, with the exponentially increasing body of medical knowledge (labs, medications, surgical procedures, etc), how long can it keep going with nonspecific MD/DO "general medical education"?

Psychiatry, pathology, OB/GYN, and pediatrics come to mind as a few fields that definetly have their core in general medicine and overlap with other specialties, yet they require pretty specialized knowledge due to a largely specialized patient population.

Maybe it's just a thought I had while studying for my upcoming path II test all day before I had to get to work, but knowing your specialty from the start really does seem to have its advantages. I really key in on things like Buerger's, glomus body tumor, varicose veins, etc which would I would be likely to encounter in my specialty. Of course I learn and remember the presentation of other conditions such as , but let's get real, I'm not going to try to treat giant cell arteritis or even malignant hypertension. Similarly, I wonder how often an OB/GYN uses the gout medication dosages or FHL insertion knowledge which they may have been made to memorize during med school. For me, knowing my future specialty helps me recognize what is critical versus what I simply need to recognize and stabilize until an appropriate referral has been made.

Don't get me wrong, it's plainly obvious that any medical professional has to have at least a general understanding of whole body anatomy, physio, path, etc, but I just think that knowing the specialty early on (instead of wondering what specialty one might be able to get until USMLE scores arrive) would help people focus on what anat/path is the most highly essential to them and their future practice. Just a thought...

I agree with what you are saying and in theory it sounds good, but let's be realistic. The whole medical/health system in this country needs work, from the acceptance of people to MD/DO/DPM/DDS schools to the way that health care is distributed. For the system to be fixed they'd have to break the whole thing down and start again. I do not think that just making the change to starting with a specialty will help especially since pod school cirriculum looks more and more like MD school every day.