WSOA conference slanders podiatry - Seattle, WA

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CutsWithFury

CutsWithFury

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Conference is run by a Swedish Medical Physician yet he gives no credit to the historically strong Swedish Medical Center podiatry program which literally handles all the foot and ankle trauma at two Swedish medical campuses in downtown Seattle.

Then they bring up a female orthopedic foot and ankle doc who spreads a lot of misinformation about podiatry. ACFAS and APMA will do nothing. These ortho MDs continue to bring up the skewed articles we have talked about before. Now they are using the AOFAS/APMA/ACFAS joint meeting to throw back into our faces. They are using that as a tool to show there is educational and training discrepancies. This was the trap APMA and ACFAS walked right into.

The fact that AOFAS can openly spread misinformation like this and never suffer any consequences…it’s really getting old. Our national governing organizations have really done nothing to protect the profession.
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toes701 said:
This is just sad. Where is the willingness to fight back?
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We honestly can’t expect the APMA and ACFAS organizations to stick up for us anymore. It’s run by a group of podiatrists who have made it and are in the middle and back end of their careers. To do anything that compromises their income/salaries/consultant gigs is not something they are willing to sacrifice for the profession.
 
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CutsWithFury said:
We honestly can’t expect the APMA and ACFAS organizations to stick up for us anymore. It’s run by a group of podiatrists who have made it and are in the middle and back end of their careers. To do anything that compromises their income/salaries/consultant gigs is not something they are willing to sacrifice for the profession.
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Created a whole PowerPoint to **** on a whole profession. Who else does this?
 
toes701 said:
Created a whole PowerPoint to **** on a whole profession. Who else does this?
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This is only the beginning…

I told you all that these research articles with faulty statistical data were only published to be used as fodder for presentations just like this one.

I told you all that the AOFAS/APMA/ACFAS joint meeting would accomplish nothing. Now it was a well designed trap to make it look like podiatry wants to meet AOFAS’s standards of education and training. Like we need to do that. That’s how it’s going to be twisted and presented moving forward.

This is very bad. The public attacks are ramping up. AOFAS is going to slander the profession repeatedly until they make us into a non surgical specialty.
 
Yeah the joint meeting was definitley a trap. Should just continue to do our own thing. That was stupid!
 
MusicManMike said:
There are orthopods I know that would be ashamed of this.
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What is really hurtful and shameful that a neurosurgeon from Swedish Medical Center was the host of this meeting and literally didn’t acknowledge the podiatry program that has been serving the Seattle community for close to 50 years. The residency program there handles all foot and ankle trauma. There is no orthopedic residency.

It’s just another example of ignoring good work and spreading misinformation at all costs.
 
Same old story...they take care of our "disasters", and then we see just as many of their "disasters" that come in to our clinics. We just aren't as vocal or condescending about it. Nor do we feel the need to write papers or Powerpoints about it. Only so much you can do without the all powerful M.D. behind your name.
 
Scrantonicity said:
Same old story...they take care of our "disasters", and then we see just as many of their "disasters" that come in to our clinics. We just aren't as vocal or condescending about it. Nor do we feel the need to write papers or Powerpoints about it. Only so much you can do without the all powerful M.D. behind your name.
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We can’t just sit here and take this. It’s that complacent attitude that’s gotten us into this scenario. AOFAS knows we are a bunch of weaklings and they are going to keep coming after us unless we do something about it.
 
honestly they're already losing with these arguments. we need to stay proactive. but when these conversations start that's how you know they're scared. our residency training has dramatically improved except for those few programs... (New York programs, Chicago programs)
 
Eliminate the garbage fake RRA programs that barely meets numbers and do NOT have enough volume, variety of pathology and ethical attendings. We all know who and what programs these are. They will continue to graduate residents that have zero business doing any kind of surgery. You should not be doing any kind of trauma surgery if you are triple scrubbing a simple bi-mal and the AO courses do not count. How many VA or small hospital programs make their residents drive 5 hours to another city just to get some RRA experience. Our training is not up to par as long as these programs continue to exist where residents are used as slave labor and triple scrub a toe amp. Yes we pick up and clean up ortho’s mess too but the opposite should be less frequent. As long as this cycle continues, APMA ABFAS ABPS will continue to be run by antiquated pods from our generation that have zero business doing anything surgery related.
 
It is the 30min mark in case anyone else was confused...

The lady is only a couple years out of training. I would expect they wouldn't get it. I like the "don't need a bachelor degree for podiatry school" when the same is true for nearly any MD school. I would imagine her bravado and thoughts will change over time as she progresses in her career (and likely gets more of her work revised by herself, area DPMs, and other Orthos).

...where I'm at, I am honestly more worried about competing with Good Feet stores than any Orthopedist - F&A or other. There is plenty of work to go around. Any decent Ortho is booked out far just like I am. Damn Good Feet can get people $500+ worth of crap hard plastic OTC insoles right away, though. The smart people will figure out who gets results.
 
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I emailed that video to my state organization and a few reps; I suggest you all do the same. Time will tell if the APMA/ACFAS does anything about it (probably not), but it's 2022, and there should be a need to answer/fight back at the national level.
 
This slide summarizes the 30 mins of insults she spewed…

CA635F53-BC30-4EDD-8BF4-5E6BB27A7351.png
 
I love it when she brings up "pod operate on more "sicker" patient, high BMI / obese" well no **** sherlock, most ortho won't touch some of them and it's sad that she doesn't bring up why the profession was here in the first place cause y'all refused to see majority of these patients. I'm heated.
 
CutsWithFury said:
We honestly can’t expect the APMA and ACFAS organizations to stick up for us anymore. It’s run by a group of podiatrists who have made it and are in the middle and back end of their careers. To do anything that compromises their income/salaries/consultant gigs is not something they are willing to sacrifice for the profession.
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Thanks for bringing up this video, its very important we address it. What do you think our leaders at APMA and ACFAS should be doing?

wakaflocka88 said:
Eliminate the garbage fake RRA programs that barely meets numbers and do NOT have enough volume, variety of pathology and ethical attendings. We all know who and what programs these are. They will continue to graduate residents that have zero business doing any kind of surgery. You should not be doing any kind of trauma surgery if you are triple scrubbing a simple bi-mal and the AO courses do not count. How many VA or small hospital programs make their residents drive 5 hours to another city just to get some RRA experience. Our training is not up to par as long as these programs continue to exist where residents are used as slave labor and triple scrub a toe amp. Yes we pick up and clean up ortho’s mess too but the opposite should be less frequent. As long as this cycle continues, APMA ABFAS ABPS will continue to be run by antiquated pods from our generation that have zero business doing anything surgery related.
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Idealistically yes eliminate all the “bad programs”. But what about the docs that don’t want to do surgery? Cus the downstream effect is higher level of training but fewer graduates. Would we come to a point where we are not doing non-surgical care? Would then nurses/NP/PAs start doing the nonsurgical stuff? Might not be a bad thing overall…?
 
She shamed herself. She literally made a powerpoint to give a talk about articles that any MD/DO/DPM/DDS/PHD or any science based background can clearly see is biased data. Cherry picking statistics to make a case. She looked like an absolute fool giving that talk and deep down she knows it.

I had a STJ nonunion in my office last month. Patient was mad as can be. Original surgeon was a MD foot/ankle ortho from another city. Only 1 screw so lacked proper fixation IMO but overall looked fine. I didnt bad mouth the doctor. I offered to revise and told the patient I have non unions in my practice too. I wonder what would have been said if this lady received a similar case from me...
 
DYK343 said:
She shamed herself. She literally made a powerpoint to give a talk about articles that any MD/DO/DPM/DDS/PHD or any science based background can clearly see is biased data. Cherry picking statistics to make a case. She looked like an absolute fool giving that talk and deep down she knows it.

I had a STJ nonunion in my office last month. Patient was mad as can be. Original surgeon was a MD foot/ankle ortho from another city. Only 1 screw so lacked proper fixation IMO but overall looked fine. I didnt bad mouth the doctor. I offered to revise and told the patient I have non unions in my practice too. I wonder what would have been said if this lady received a similar case from me...
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You would get sued. I had an attending in residency who was on call 5 years ago who did a talar fracture ORIF. Fracture healed and patient was discharged. Talus then went to AVN and collapsed. Unfortunately that can happen even with timely intervention and fixation. Patient got second opinion and saw foot and ankle ortho who told patient podiatrists shouldn’t do surgery. Patient ended up suing the attending.

The foot and ankle ortho is well known podiatry hater at Harborview Medical Center
 
AttackNME said:
Thanks for bringing up this video, its very important we address it. What do you think our leaders at APMA and ACFAS should be doing?



Idealistically yes eliminate all the “bad programs”. But what about the docs that don’t want to do surgery? Cus the downstream effect is higher level of training but fewer graduates. Would we come to a point where we are not doing non-surgical care? Would then nurses/NP/PAs start doing the nonsurgical stuff? Might not be a bad thing overall…?
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Completely valid points and I agree. To me the challenge are even if there are grads that don’t want to do any surgery but still do a lot of wound care - they still need to know the limits of wounds that need some level of intervention before it will heal and not weekly piece-mealed EpiFix. Or the grads that attempt to do something beyond their limits of training. IMO the above 2 scenarios are more common than the ones that are 100% non surgical.
 
wakaflocka88 said:
Completely valid points and I agree. To me the challenge are even if there are grads that don’t want to do any surgery but still do a lot of wound care - they still need to know the limits of wounds that need some level of intervention before it will heal and not weekly piece-mealed EpiFix. Or the grads that attempt to do something beyond their limits of training. IMO the above 2 scenarios are more common than the ones that are 100% non surgical.
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The quality of residency programs are variable but the foot and ankle ortho MD clearly lectured and promoted false information regarding our education and residency training. Clearly cherry picked data from those biased articles. Clearly misinterpreted on purpose the joint meeting and made an opinion that podiatry is coming to the AOFAS to meet their standards.

Something like this should have never been allowed in a public educational meeting.

It’s slander. It’s defamation. It’s deserves a vigorous response from our national governing bodies.

If you are a podiatrist and are literally saying “oh well, what are you going to do? Blah blah blah”….then YOU are the problem.

Our profession is in this predicament because the APMA, ACFAS and ABFAS are a bunch of cowards.

AOFAS will keep coming after us with this slander. They want the public to believe podiatry is bad. Just like Treace wants the public to believe they need a 3D bunion. AOFAS will not stop this time. They are bringing the heat like we have never seen before.
 
CutsWithFury said:
You would get sued. I had an attending in residency who was on call 5 years ago who did a talar fracture ORIF. Fracture healed and patient was discharged. Talus then went to AVN and collapsed. Unfortunately that can happen even with timely intervention and fixation. Patient got second opinion and saw foot and ankle ortho who told patient podiatrists shouldn’t do surgery. Patient ended up suing the attending.

The foot and ankle ortho is well known podiatry hater at Harborview Medical Center
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What’s the deal with Harborview ortho and Podiatry? Wasn’t Sig Hansen training a lot of the “AO fellows” back in the day.
 
Othello said:
What’s the deal with Harborview ortho and Podiatry? Wasn’t Sig Hansen training a lot of the “AO fellows” back in the day.
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Sig Hansen was pro podiatry but Bruce Sangeorzan and Bernirscke are not. They don’t give podiatry any credit and slander podiatry whenever they can. It’s unfortunate because they graduate another anti podiatry ortho foot and ankle fellow every year through their fellowship program. Michael Brage is a better ortho foot and ankle doc than both of them combined and is pro podiatry. Brage is the GOAT.
 
CutsWithFury said:
Sig Hansen was pro podiatry but Bruce Sangeorzan and Bernirscke are not. They don’t give podiatry any credit and slander podiatry whenever they can. It’s unfortunate because they graduate another anti podiatry ortho foot and ankle fellow every year through their fellowship program. Michael Brage is a better ortho foot and ankle doc than both of them combined and is pro podiatry. Brage is the GOAT.
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Yup. Rotated there as a student. Went to grand rounds at Harborview and sig Hansen was in the audience. Sangeorzan and Bernischke ignored us to their fellows. They made comments in front of us. The XR of cases they showed were questionable. Lapidus done with 20 screws and plates. Looked like a medial column fusion for a bunion. Hansen is brilliant, read his book and he loved teaching regardless of your credentials.

I like how the host of the above talk disregards the fact that Christensen does plenty of TARs at Swedish on a regular basis in addition to the residency program. Maybe he should have the MD lady that and the excellent results he’s had over YEARS of doing TARs
 
Seattle is historically very anti podiatry. I'm happy we put together a couple good programs up there but its always going to be a struggle if you're practicing up there or compare the rest of the country to that area. Parts of NY/north east and some southern areas are also pretty bad.

The amount of podiatry slander during basic events/meetings etc in seattle area is hilarious at times.

Were not going non surgical. There is too much demand for foot surgery and not enough foot/ankle ortho to go around. They only graduate a couple a year. Why would you go ortho then specialize in foot surgery which we all know pays garbage - The reason most ortho F&A fellowships go unfilled every year.

Historically podiatry did not have very many good resdiencies. Now over the last 20 years we have tons of powerhouse programs that rival and many exceed ortho foot fellowships. Those graduates are the ones typically getting hospital/ortho/msg positions where they will be exposed to the more complex cases they were properly trained to do. Perception of podiatry is only going to increase as time goes on. This is what scares AOFAS.
 
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One of her bosses (It’s ortho so maybe she already partnered…) is a big anti-podiatry goon as well. Which is ironic considering he was sued for operating on the wrong foot. That group is full of like-able orthos, Brian Padrta and Jessica Kohring, not so much.

The unkindest cuts
 
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dtrack22 said:
One of her bosses (It’s ortho so maybe she already partnered…) is a big anti-podiatry goon as well. Which is ironic considering he was sued for operating on the wrong foot. That group is full of like-able orthos, Brian Padrta and Kohning, not so much.

The unkindest cuts
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Wrong site surgery scares the hell out of me. Especially when they have X's and "no"s written on their foot when I walk in. I get alcohol and gauze and scrub it off the patients foot when I see that stuff. All I want is my initials signed on the foot confirmed with the awake patient that that is the operative foot.

And why havent they made a better marker yet? One that doesnt 90% wash off with surgical prep...

Edit:
From the article Dtrack posted. WOW: One study suggests a rate of 1 in 15,500 surgical procedures. A survey of hand surgeons published last year found that one in five had operated on the wrong site at least once in their careers.
 
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I'm always curious to hear what others are doing. I mark the leg while awake with an arrow from the leg to the foot, my initials, and the word yes. I don't mark individual procedures out but I describe the area of the incision and always suggest a larger area than it will be.

Some of the other forums on here have linked to a website that discusses malpractice cases, law suits etc. One of the things I saw on there was a case where the WRONG SIDE OF A BRAIN WAS REMOVED (jeezus). One of the comments made was that you should always have imagery in the room so when you do the time out you can confirm (a) the extremity is marked (b) and the extremity agrees with the imagery in the room ie. left foot is on the wall.
 
CutsWithFury said:
Sig Hansen was pro podiatry but Bruce Sangeorzan and Bernirscke are not. They don’t give podiatry any credit and slander podiatry whenever they can...
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wakaflocka88 said:
...Hansen is brilliant, read his book and he loved teaching regardless of your credentials...
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Yep, this is the key. ^^^

I invited ortho residents (DO) to scrub with me any time when I was work in Detroit (hospital that was DO ortho program sponsor, and not a sponsor but covered location for a pretty good DPM program). I didn't care who showed up or wanted to learn... it never caused any problems - probabaly promoted understanding between the programs. I would talk to the F&A orthos or gen orthos or their residents in the lounge whenever I could; very few are scary or rude.

The end goal always needs to be interest, advancing the science, making the patients do well for for foot and ankle care, surgery, science. It doesn't matter if it's MD, DPM, DO, some foreign guy who wants to learn, etc. Who cares? Teach whoever wants to scrub in or show up to clinic.

“There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit.”
 
If this doctor’s surgical skills are as weak as her research skills, I feel sorry for her patients. Her “research” was filled with an incredible amount of inaccuracies. One of my favorite was her comment that DPMs aren’t required to have CME credits. More of her great inaccuracies include that DPM residents perform 200-300 cases during training and that there was no board certification process prior to 2013.

This simply reflects her ignorance and laziness. Instead of REALLY researching the topic, she must have found outdated and inaccurate info. The sad part is that her audience likely believed her.

A foot and ankle ortho obtained privileges at our hospital. I was speaking with him (this preceded the Lapidus boom) and he told me he only did one Lapidus during his entire training, including fellowship.

This woman is simply ignorant and insecure. Quality people obtain a good reputation by proving things with their work, not by degrading others.

She’s the same mentality as those who think DOs are all MD flunkies.
 
Got an email from ACFAS stating they have seen the video and will be formulating a response in conjunction with APMA and ABFAS. I’m glad they’re doing this but also goes to show how fractured we are by having 3 separate entities instead of one unified group/board.
 
CutsWithFury said:
Don’t ask him for any advice he will say he doesn’t have a license in your designated state therefore can’t offer any information.
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Not sure if he’s ever actually practiced law or podiatry. He’s too busy running a site that addresses major concerns such as the horrible dangers of wearing flip flops, whether you should trim (not debride) toenails from right to left or left to right.
 
CutsWithFury said:
I appreciate a “response” but if someone blatantly presents a false narrative publicly in a derogatory manner against a person/profession can’t this be enough for a defamation suit in the court of law?
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There has to be at least one snakey lawyer that will say absolutely this is defamation and will gladly try to take this case one. We shall await to see what our response is and I truly hope they give a firm response to her and AOFAS
 
wakaflocka88 said:
There has to be at least one snakey lawyer that will say absolutely this is defamation and will gladly try to take this case one. We shall await to see what our response is and I truly hope they give a firm response to her and AOFAS
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I truly hope the response is a little bit hostile while being professional. We can’t tolerate this.
 
Meh, a few ways to go here:

1) Ignore it... like with other stuff, send the message it's so dumb they don't even get validated. Let them spend their time making up those presentations, practicing it, and spreading the misinfo that their even most of their colleagues don't buy into. Meanwhile we all quietly just get results and continue to gain PCP, various MD, Ortho respeck on a local and hospital level.

2) Respond... uses logic, makes rebuttal, feels "just"... but also takes significant time, significant money, result will be questionable (gives them attention/validation, shows that the statement/claim may have had some merit since it must be defended... when the damage of getting DPMs flustered, distracted, angered is already done anyways). Realize that any lawsuit only opens the door for a counter.

3) Luca Brasi... ... ...
 
I think the appropriate response is to be as aggressive as possible. Because that is exactly what they are scared of.
 
Feli said:
Meh, a few ways to go here:

1) Ignore it... like with other stuff, send the message it's so dumb they don't even get validated. Let them spend their time making up those presentations, practicing it, and spreading the misinfo that their even most of their colleagues don't buy into. Meanwhile we all quietly just get results and continue to gain PCP, various MD, Ortho respeck on a local and hospital level.

2) Respond... uses logic, makes rebuttal, feels "just"... but also takes significant time, significant money, result will be questionable (gives them attention/validation, shows that the statement/claim may have had some merit since it must be defended... when the damage of getting DPMs flustered, distracted, angered is already done anyways). Realize that any lawsuit only opens the door for a counter.

3) Luca Brasi... ... ...
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This deserves a response re-emphasizing what our education and residency training is really all about. Her numbers/ data were not even close to being true. Saying that podiatrists don’t need to do CME? I mean…really?

What you don’t understand is that so many MD/DO from all different specialities don’t know much about podiatry.

Now you have an MD saying false information which could potentially change referral trends or ortho could earn some new alliances to go to government and try and change the laws. She even mentioned that in her presentation. She is advocating for physicians to lobby and get laws changed.

The biased faulty articles, the joint meeting, presentations with false information. AOFAS is literally trying to build a case to overhaul the laws. The fact they have members presenting and lobbying for this on a national level is downright disgusting and despicable.

This was a hit piece on so many levels and you want to be diplomatic about it?
 
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