surgery

[ncah2]

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Hi! I'm a little confused about surgery and podiatry and I have read a few different things. Do all podiatrists perform surgery? Is it harder to find employment for podiatrists that want to do clinicals and not surgery? Also, is salary lower?

 

[BlueFoxAZ]

bump! i would love to know too 🙂

 

[krabmas]

No, all podiatrists do not perform surgery. The profession has morphed overtime to become a surgical subspecialty.

Many podiatrists will perform nail avulsions, debride calluses and nails and warts but not do any other surgical procedures. (debridement of anything is consider a surgical code for billing purposes)

There are some that only do orthotics and other bracing, splinting, paddings and strappings.

Some will do all this hammertoes and bunion surgical corrections and removal of soft tissue masses.

Then we move on to the more rearfoot reconstructive and trauma surgical procedures.

Currently all residency programs are surgically based either 2 or 3 years. There are programs that have more variety of cases and larger volumes of cases. If you don't really want to do much surgery then some people chose to go to a program with more clinic and less surgery.

I think overtime we will see less and less non-surgical podiatrists.
Even the podiatric surgeons learn how to treat patients that either do not want surgery or are not good surgical canidates.

Also, it is the CPME/COTH's goal to phase out the 2 year programs and have only 3 year programs.

I hope this answered your question.

 

[hightower]

Hi! I'm a little confused about surgery and podiatry and I have read a few different things. Do all podiatrists perform surgery? Is it harder to find employment for podiatrists that want to do clinicals and not surgery? Also, is salary lower?

As far as salary is concerned a faculty member threw out a statistic that actually shows non-surgical practices end up making about the same as surgical ones. It was surprising to me but when you think about it its all about volume. You can either see eight patients in two hours back at your office or spend two hours on one patient in the O.R. performing surgery. As has been said I think the numbers of non-surgical pods will fade over the years due to the surgical nature of residency training. From a patient point of view I know that I would rather see a comprehensive podiatrist that could treat any of my conditions and not have to be referred to a surgical pod if needed. It is just easier to have a one stop shop. These days podiatry is very much a surgical profession so if one does not want to be involved in surgery then they might want to consider being a family practice doctor (or one of the other non-surgical specialties), a non-surgical PA, etc.