The profession provides options that allow exposure to the full scope of care according to the individuals desires. This is what APMA points to, the ability to shape your career in a way that limits your exposure to seriously ill patients.
We need your optimism on here, it balances things out. I do feel the 2 am amputation mocking has been played out.
That being said the ability to shape one’s career in podiatry is often difficult and not easy. It just is not, at least compared to many other healthcare professions. I know of an RN who makes a great living working 2 full time remote work jobs simultaneously and has never done one day of patient care with her degree. I know of an ER doctor who had so many job offers he made a spreadsheet with pros and cons and even had items like teaching residents as category. He settled on a 30 hour job with full benefits in his desired location. Coincidentally his wife was a lawyer, probably an equally intelligent person actually, and and she could only a find a mediocre job or two. The lawyer scenario is more like podiatry.
If one has better training and is more geographically open they might have more options.
For the typical podiatry residency graduate they will start as an associate. Maybe 10 percent straight out of residency get a hospital, ortho or even VA job now that they become more competitive. Maybe 15 percent, if we lump in fellowships and label them as part of the graduating resident pool. Maybe another 10 percent at some point in their career get an organizational job if they remain geographically open.
That leaves about 75 percent that will be in private practice. Many of those also desired organizational jobs. 7 years of training and lots of job applications got them nowhere. Many will buy in somewhere, purchase a practice or open their own practice. About 25 percent of this profession will never have an organizational job, have one of the few good PP jobs or be an owner. They will jump associate jobs, mobile podiatry jobs and some of those will leave the profession. No one went into podiatry to be at the bottom 25 percent of this profession. The bottom 25 percent of the MD, DO, PA, NP, CRNA, AA, RN jobs are still pretty good. Many would not have signed up if they knew how poor the pay would be in the early years, how difficult the job market would be and how geographically open one often has to be.
As far as private practice there are not that many career paths. Most are not make a living doing things like sports medicine. Almost all are more like the IPED podiatrists. Some do a bit more diabetic foot than others and some do a few more complex surgeries, but the way they practice is very similar.
Should one attempt to practice how they want? Of course…..will most be able to practice how they desire? Probably not.
As far as a transplant surgeon they decided on that career. They were not forced into it. It was not the only job they could find. They are likely in an academic setting with lots of fellows and residents. Yes they still have limited notice for surgeries that can happen at anytime. They could totally dial back their career if they want. Lots of options. They are jobs many places where they could make 200,000 plus just doing things as simple as hernias and lumps and bumps or if they want they could work for insurance company doing no patient care making 6 figures.
One can promote the positive aspects of this profession……they do exist at least for some. The negative aspects discussed on here also exist in podiatry and they are much more than just blowing it off as all professions have their negative aspects. Podiatry has larger problems than that. This also needs to be mentioned to prospective students.
As air bud said we are, as a whole, pretty fair on here. There are only a couple really negative regulars that try not to be balanced. Unfortunately being fair does involve discussing things that our organizations would prefer to pretend does not exist. We have serious saturation and one should think long and hard before committing to this profession because of it.
