For
@ChartingChad or others wondering, yeah, podiatry is pretty all over the board.
@CutsWithFury is right, there are DPMs with anywhere from 0 to 4+ years of residency/fellow training out there practicing.
There are some who basically just cut nails, others do a lot of wound/pus/amp stuff, others do mainly sports/ortho stuff. Many do it all.
If you seek the good training, you have phenomenal skills, but here isn't nearly enough of that high level DPM training to go around.
That irregularity can be used to your advantage. You can make podiatry into basically whatever you want it to be.
For example, when I started school, I had little idea DPMs even did RRA (the ones I shadowed just did basic office and maybe forefoot a hospital weekly/monthly). When I learned more of it in school, it was interesting and I wanted to have the most to offer patients... simply worked hard to find that training. There are all kinds of paths and all kinds of practice situations due to the irregularity of training and of practice types.
My exp has not been like that of
@malleolusman ... while some of the hospital jobs are good, a lot of the "best parts" are benefits (which may or may not be too valuable to you... largely dependent on if you're healthy, if you have a financially competent spouse/partner, and if you have family). And yes, if anyone thinks it's sour grapes, I get interview invites or call backs from most hospitals I've applied to... I have had those jobs and been competitive for them. Personally, I value the better hours, no call, fair amount of autonomy better. I didn't care to have my scope/referrals limited by the hospital/dept and not my training. I don't want to lose all of A, C, D and E cases since Dr. X does those at some hospital. I mainly didn't like the admin stuff and so much wasted time, mandatory call. I hated having about 4% decision power and voice regarding staffing or tech or supplies quality/amounts for the clinic I worked in every day... and watching some RN or MBA or MD screw those up royally time after time or have nothing happen due to copious heapings of bright red tape. Any employed job - hosp or PP or any - is only as good as the boss/admin. Hospitals have such a ridiculous number of admins or wannabe admins that some are sure to be low quality... and even the good ones are limited by bureaucracy.
PP will be allllll over the board, as it can be in many specialties. This is why many DPMs say hospital/MSG is the way to go and PP is stupid: there are some horror stories. In PP, there might be those DPMs seeing 20-30 per day and making 100k with a bad contract/owner/setup, and there are others seeing that same volume and making over 300k with a better system and better contract. A lot depends if you have decent payers and good resources to use for pts and collections (DME, diag tests, OTC products, ... maybe path lab, advanced wound cares, etc). The autonomy is key, though... you can cultivate the types of referral patterns you like in many areas; you simply make personal relationships with the PCPs and maybe your colleagues also. I have the odd day when I have more than 2 or 3 toenail care pts (which my assistants do 90% of the encounter) on my whole day's schedule... those are actually a rare welcomed break encounters that are also easy to chart (vs a revision surgery consult or something). I still have the backup and support from the owners/admins on how to boost my revenues or get marketing in areas I want. I enjoy it, but that's just me.
GL, you can do quite well in podiatry or many specialties.
