...And if there are these ways to specialize, is it by doing a fellowship? And what kind of fellowships are there?
And I notice some of these residency programs expose students to derm plastics or ortho. Does that mean that you would be allowed to do plastics /derm on the foot or are u simply "exposed" to it?...
Pod fellowships are usually for a sub-focus: F&A trauma, diabetic limb salvage, F&A sports med, advanced reconstruction, geriatric, etc.
Keep in mind that 3yrs of dedicated residency is a LONG time and a ton of foot and ankle cases (assuming you go to a decent program). Gen surgeons do 5yrs general and then a vascular fellowship; they will never really use the bowel, hernia, tumor, etc skills again once they specialize in vasc. Orthos do 5yrs ortho and then often do a certain fellowship focused on a subspecialty within skeletal system (spine, F&A, shoulder, total joints, etc). They will still do some general ortho when on call or if they until they have enough patients within their fellowship specialty area, but they they usually like to focus in on just the niche fellowship area cases and not really do much else. You won't really see a peds ortho doing much/any adult trauma or a F&A ortho doing much shoulder repair, etc. Now, imagine if those guys had just done 3yrs of focused residency training in their surgical sub-specialty right after the time of graduation; that's sorta what DPMs do (with the exception of some months of outside med/surg residency rotations). Your training for F&A surgery is quite badass if you go to a good program. You know the anatomy, you know the tools, and you should be able to do basically anything in our scope if you did a good residency and applied yourself. IMO, you have to have a real reason to justify doing a pod fellowship after 3yrs of residency... ie want a unique skill your residency didn't cover well, want to teach or get a job that's very hard unless you do extra publishing/politicking that fellowship may be conducive to, etc.
Every state scope is a bit different, but pods can surgically treat basically anything involving the ankle or foot in most areas. That might mean plastics procedures, derm lesions, vascular amputations, ortho type deformity or fracture fixes, etc. Whether you do all those things or not will depend a lot on your residency/fellowship training exposure, competence, interest, and comfort level. Having a good plastics rotation might make you more comfortable with skin grafts, flaps, plasty, etc in the foot or a good peds ortho rotation might make clubfoot and met adductus less intimidating, but it probably also just depends on what kinds of cases your DPM attendings are bringing to your residency program.
