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That will self destruct the entire purpose of the podcasts……
Job Market
Started by DogSnoot
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Here’s a fun story. I’m sitting here right now, watching the Indiana v Oregon game with 3 orthopedic surgeons (and a mutual sales rep). We all work at different practices. 3 of us are hospital employed (2 of us at critical access), one is in a private ortho group. One of the ortho’s goes, “these damn recruiters don’t sleep, it’s 8pm on the east coast and they are texting me about another job.” One of the other orthos says, “Ha! I just got one too! Is yours for $3,000 per day too? Man these people are desperate.”
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking how I can count on one hand the number of texts I’ve gotten from recruiters in the past year. All of which were “locums” positions at IHS facilities. Because Podiatry.
If there is a plus side, these guys are nice, no podiatry pissing matches. The trauma guy and I have had some mutual patients and have a good working relationship even though we practice in different towns at different facilities. But he ain’t offering me a job in his group or anything so job market still blows
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking how I can count on one hand the number of texts I’ve gotten from recruiters in the past year. All of which were “locums” positions at IHS facilities. Because Podiatry.
If there is a plus side, these guys are nice, no podiatry pissing matches. The trauma guy and I have had some mutual patients and have a good working relationship even though we practice in different towns at different facilities. But he ain’t offering me a job in his group or anything so job market still blows
When I was a resident, I remember all the MD residents in my hospital talking about all the offers they were getting and recruiters emailing them constantly. Basically nonexistent for me.
To be fair, I have heard other niche specialties don’t really get offers like that and that it’s mostly word of mouth or creating your own hospital position.
To be fair, I have heard other niche specialties don’t really get offers like that and that it’s mostly word of mouth or creating your own hospital position.
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Sendin_Toes_2market
Full Member
we aren't a niche at 18k pods lol.
A few thoughts…1) We are on the same page with a lot of this. 2) you all obviously don’t listen to my podcast. 3) Adam Smasher should fire up the podcast he’s discussed In other posts. 😂
That is why I’d love to have a few of you on Dean’s Chat to banter this stuff around!
That is why I’d love to have a few of you on Dean’s Chat to banter this stuff around!
Only if you can use AI to make my voice sound like Bane
I’m a IM subspecialty fellow and can confirm. Thankfully, they only have my burner Google voice phone number and email.
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This is true. My MD/DO resident colleagues are already receiving emails, text messages, and LinkedIn outreach from physician recruiters, while my podiatry co-residents and peers are largely limited to occasional offers for non-surgical nursing-home coverage or mobile podiatry roles (e.g., house calls through companies like Upperline Health). Salaries are rarely posted, and when discussions do occur, compensation often starts around—or barely above—$100,000, which is difficult to reconcile with the length and intensity of podiatric training.
Dean’s chats and national discussions tend to highlight only the most successful podiatrists, without adequately addressing the realities faced by early-career DPMs or the long-term trajectory of the profession. There is little honest conversation about how podiatry risks gradual marginalization over the next few decades. I foresee hospital-based wound care increasingly shifting toward nursing-driven models, with NPs and PAs trained to handle much of what has traditionally been podiatric scope. What may remain for podiatrists is predominantly non-surgical nursing-home work or high-risk infectious and amputation cases that other surgical services are reluctant to manage.
If the profession is to remain viable, meaningful structural change is necessary. APMA and CPME must work collaboratively with the LCME to standardize podiatric medical education and residency training. From there, a true integrated pathway could emerge—such as an MD-DPM–type model analogous to MD-DDS/DMD training in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Alternatively, podiatric residencies may ultimately open to MD/DO graduates, leading to absorption into allopathic or osteopathic subspecialty tracks and effectively ending the separate DPM pathway altogether.
Podiatry had a strong run—from chiropody to its peak in the 1970s and 1980s—but the decline since then is difficult to ignore.
I am very surprised to hear that the dean is not discussing these minor issues in his podcast. Do you think it might be due to the plummeting podiatry school admissions?
When I lose my license, I will 💯 do it!
Not going to link to it, but saw on Instagram post of a person completing a newer fellowship. They're posting on LinkedIn that they're looking for jobs, and very nicely the program director also posted hey does anybody know where this person could get a job.... To be fair I guess it is January at least this isn't happening in May...
Goddamn that's sad
Orthopedic surgeons have jobs lined up before they start fellowship more often than not. Virtually all of them at our program did.
I remember once being contacted by a fellow famous well-known East Coast fellowshipsliterally a month or two before they graduate with them looking for a job.... And let's just say I was practicing it in the middle of nowhere at that time.
There are job posting I have seen on the pod-oriented websites (PM, ACFAS) that are gone within 1-2 weeks, and they aren't anything special.
There are people I know through rotations and school that took jobs in places they never wanted to go in the first place because they have families and started freaking out around March/April, grads that did not find a job until well after June 30th, a fellowship grad who took a basic chip and clip gig cause that's all that was available in their target area, another fellowship grad whom went to a place he/she does not like, but that was all their director could hook them up with that was at least surgical.
Most jobs I see advertising an okay base salary (150-250K) have been mobile gigs oddly enough. Idk how true to accurate those salaries are, but its better than the 65-90K that 2 of y'all mentioned your residents are signing on this thread, and the 100-130K offers on PMnews and ACFAS...all of which are gone already lol
Also, I find it funny a mobile gig like this ad "will also consider" a fresh grad, as if this job is a hot commodity (or maybe it is??? ).
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Podiatry prides itself on being a surgical profession—right up until you start looking for a job. After three years of surgical residency, the market overwhelmingly wants non-operative podiatrists. At some point, the disconnect stops being ironic and starts feeling deceptive. We are trained extensively for surgery, then funneled into roles that barely tap into that training. The profession seems perfectly comfortable producing surgeons it doesn’t actually need.
Podiatry is a surgical profession and I am proud of my surgical training. The real issue is too many graduates were trained with the thought of only performing complex reconstructions surgeries. To be fair though APMA did make it sound like everyone will be doing exfix and total ankles.
The demand for these surgeries is simply not there, nor lucrative. Heck even the ortho F&A will usually supplement their work by taking general ortho call. They even published an article on this.
But skin grafts, flaps, I&Ds/amps, forefoot elective stuff are still surgeries. These are the stuff I do daily. Nobody outside the profession looks down on you for doing these. The only negative remarks I got were actually from my own residents frowning on the fact that I no longer do any rearfoot work. They probably think I am just a mustache TFP and is worthless.
That is the disconnect.
And be asked to overbill to make living doing nursing/assisted
as said before, all PGY3s act gangster until it's time to look for jobs..
You can try the typical places like the podiatry classifieds, indeed, etc, but you'll need to incorporate tons of cold calling
Be location promiscuous
Contact your residency director for job offerings. And yes, be mindful of the location (cost of living) too.
But what’s the $/wRVU compensation numbers?
What about wRVU compensation? I need the median numbers for that so I can ask for more money per wRVU
Yeah would be helpful to see the wRVU production and $/wRVU with those as well.
They aren’t gonna be pretty. People really need to start pushing their employers to go above what MGMA says they should be at, otherwise the $/wRVU numbers don’t change.
In the MD/DO world, competition between hospitals for a limited number of physician/surgeons is what drives those numbers up. You want to hire a new OBGYN? Gotta do better than MGMA median to be competitive. Slowly compensation data increases. Unfortunately for us, well, you know…
How common is the tiered $/wRVU system for other specialties? I've seen some for pods that are laughable at lower production levels and become decent if you are a good producer (8-10k wRVUs) and then the $/wRVU falls to lower than the first tier over 10k of production. I was hired at a flat rate of almost $53/wRVU which I was told was slightly above MGMA average for the region.
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Yes, my employer gave me an additional $1 per our view unsolicited.... In a year I'll probably ask for more. I know another person on here who got maybe a three to $4 increase unsolicited.... But whatever Yogi Berra or whoever said you miss 100% of the balls you don't swing at.
But yeah we're podiatrists and have zero leverage
there are some pretty crazy valuations I've heard of some podiatrists in HCOL areas between 80 and 90 and then within the same system around 50. I'm at 50. No plenty of people in the 55 to 60 but I also know plenty of people in the low 40s which sounds absolutely terrible.... I remember two years ago interviewing for a job in a very outdoor oriented attractive city and they were offering 37 and then once you became " " partner it was like 39 and a half or something crazy..... You start doing 8 9 10,000 RVUs a year in that adds up and you're like holy crap somebody else is putting in the same work as me and making an extra $100,000 a year
Said every PP podiatrist out there about those lucky bastard hospital pods...
Yeah sorry those people mean an extra 200k
50 for true rural is low. But yeah no leverage when job market is like this.
Yeah I am not rural rural ....like an hour outside medium sized metro 500k
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I’ll be honest, I’ve wondered what your high income partner does out there. Cash pay podiatry is the new car wash?Gallup is more than an hour from Albuquerque.
She's at one of the top cybersec companies... schooling costs zero percent the cost of podiatry school and 2-5+ times the income. 🧐
I still wear the pants (I think).
Welp, that’s pretty solid. Mine is top tier in a different industry too, but makes way less.
Wearing the pants is an illusion. My partner will still die on a hill that Skyler is the better character than Walt. I’ve had to accept she’s clearly wrong, but I don’t need the risk of a cartel hit if I bring it up again.
Recent offer from a private equity looking to fill a “surgical” position.
$185,000 base salary, $12,000 signing bonus, and 30% of Net Collections over $550,000 in Year 1, with an increase to 40% without base salary the year after. Benefits include malpractice, CME, licensure, DEA, and tail coverage under certain circumstances. Non-compete is negligible.
$185,000 base salary, $12,000 signing bonus, and 30% of Net Collections over $550,000 in Year 1, with an increase to 40% without base salary the year after. Benefits include malpractice, CME, licensure, DEA, and tail coverage under certain circumstances. Non-compete is negligible.
This job sounds perfect for somebody that needs a 1 or 2 year holdover while they look for another job that doesn’t suck.
30% after 3x base is rough. No way they'll hit that bonus.
Its more than I started at, but the world is also more expensive than when I started. Health insurance will run some variation of $6-20K depending on if you have a family. A 4% 401k match on that would have been worth $7400. Live frugal AF and start your own thing. I wonder how the PE game juices the surgery side ie. do they find a way to get facility money out of your work.
Last PE I saw take over forced the owner to cut down on operating days and convert to clinic.
BeaverBlade
Full Member
Depends. PE jobs Make a ton off your ancillaries while you see none of it. Your collections are usually “what you physically do” so selling custom inserts, mri (if in ortho group) etc… you’ll never see it. Some PE groups might own surgery centers but that’s usually if it’s an ortho group.
Also PE groups are now hiring NP’s (upperline). I’m sure you’ll feed them and vice versa.
What happens to these groups when they decide they can make more off NP’s who are nonsurgical than podiatrists? Who knows… but the NP army is coming to podiatry
Don’t do podiatry friends. In general don’t do medicine in 2026 though.
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The only good podiatry jobs right now are hospital jobs. I hope you like pus, being on call, and likely never seeing your kids. Also you’ll probably live in Idaho.
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BeaverBlade
Full Member
$191,000 job. Signing bonus will be taxed at 50%. Make sure to leave at one year so you don’t have to pay back the signing bonus. Coast the whole year because you’ll definitely not be making a bonus.
Rent a 1 bedroom apartment. Take any 401k match but do not contribute any more than that. Be on a strict budget. Put ALL the money you make on this job into your student loans that are at 6.6% interest.
Repeat the above 3 times and become debt free.
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So just so we are clear - you dispense a CAM boot to a Medicare patient. The clinic buys the boot for $25-50. Medicare pays $300. Even though you are paid under a collections model the podiatrist still sees none of it?
PE is looking out for the doctor. Surgery doesn't pay anything 😍
BeaverBlade
Full Member
Yes. That’s how it worked for me. Also why I didn’t stay.
Amazon would be getting a lot of sales from me out of spite.
