You know what's even more valuable than doing good work? Just telling people that you are an "expert" in something. You can market yourself as anything and then you only have to do average work. If your marketing is good enough.
Yeah, this is 100%... doing good work is helpful, good marketing is the real rep pusher.^^
...for OP, I would skip the wound care certs like CWS or whatever. You will almost never have trouble getting wound care privileges anywhere since most MDs and even most DPMs don't want to do it... at least not much. If you are actually in a competitive area for it and have trouble getting on at a wound center, you should just do it in your office... or move. Even in the big cities, the other DPMs shouldn't ever be blocking you from bringing your own office wound pts to the hospital WCCntr... but they may try to snipe you from getting any new pt refers at that WCC if it is a saturated area. The WC privi part is a slam dunk, though... it is just the OR bone/joint/RRA stuff that is your privi concern at some places.
The WC certs generally won't impress anyone. They don't impress me.
Wound care is craaaazy easy and we all know that (venous ulcers get compress/elevate, arterial wounds get sent to vascular asap, pressure sites get offloaded, infected or traumatic one get debrided/amp aggressively and some IV/PO abx). Done: how to heal any wound in one (run-on) sentence!
Okay, okay... if the wound is wet, dry it with betadine around edges or more freq dsg changes... if dry, wet it with abx cream like silva or genta or mupirocin, occlusive dsg, etc blah blah. If it doesn't heal or make serious progress in 3mo, use your head and do better offloading, amp it, culture or biopsy, MRI, better DM mgmt, Vasc consult, Nutrition consult, ID consult, etc. Wounds are just not hard, no matter what some "wound master" DPMs who do nothing but graft$ and di$pense copious DME or light weekly debridement$ for years and years for every wound might say... or what the paid wound researchers who will use all the fancy crap they get sponsored by and also order 100 labs and tests for each 5mm wound might try to tell you at meetings.
...and sure, I guess we do have the odd birds like occasional VACs or pinch grafts and flaps or amps we do ourselves, also gotta recognize indications for major amps from Vasc and big boy flaps and STSG from Plastics prn. However, the fancy lotions and potions, silver wafers and foils and foams, and the various dead animal membranes to put on live human wounds that the wound RNs always want to try (since the nice rep brought them lunch) are 99% hocus with "research" published by the makers and some toolbox docs being paid to pitch them. I will say that I find the wenis skin stuff decent from time to time in rare cases of huge burns or venous wounds or dehiscence that is superficial or has granulated with VAC yet would take forever to heal otherwise, but that stuff is live human... not dead animal. I just use it as a mini STSG.
If you do want something for your wall plaques or CV, then ABPMed is easy and good to get coming out of training, and it does help make things easier for your office mgr with some insurance and hospital apps to be certified instead of qual (some just don't understand DPM boards and want to see the word certified). That ABPM includes wound care... they now have a special supplemental would cert also if you get CME/licensing $ allowance for that, but it seems like extra $ grab for them and time waste for you otherwise. You should also definitely come out ABFASurg qualified, and then eventually cert once you get enough cases (at which time you can let the ABPM cert go, or keep it).
