Primary

When people say that "surgery is the future", they usually mean that podiatry has/is evolving into a surgical subspecialty. In other words, more pods are being hired on to multispecialty, ortho, and hospital groups to do surgery. They are very well compensated.

However, for the private practice doc, in the time it takes to do one surgery, you could have seen 10-20 patients. In other words, more money can be made in clinic than surgery. So it is important to have a well-balanced practice. On the other hand, as a private practice doc, most of your surgery will come from your clinic patients so balance shouldn't really be an issue.