I am considering podiatry and am trying to do my research before choosing a lifelong career. I am planning to forego applying to MD/DO next cycle to apply DPM. I am having second thoughts given the SDN podiatry forum and the amount of posts discussing if podiatry has a reasonable ROI. I made this pro/con list to see if podiatry would still be a good fit for me. Any additional insight would be appreciated.
Advantages:
Advantages:
- Choosing Specialty vs. Step Score Choosing For Me - I worked with an orthopedic foot & ankle surgeon for 4 years in clinic and shadowing surgery. I know I like foot and ankle pathology as well as the surgical and clinical aspects of medicine. It doesn’t make sense for me to gamble with the possibility of not matching into ortho as an MD; risking being unfulfilled in my future career when I can go into podiatry and I know I am doing what I love.
- Specialization - I worked closely with physicians in an Orthopedic department at an academic hospital. I became familiar with the process of residency - residency schedules, responsibilities, and lifestyle. Many residents knew what they wanted to specialize in by PGY2 but had to rotate with specialities they weren’t excited about. This was just one factor contributing to burn out during most rotations. Furthermore, they lost a lot of opportunities surgically by spending significant time in other rotations that were not related to their fellowship/chosen specialty.
- Lifestyle - Podiatrists, on average, work anywhere from 35-46 hours/weeks from what I could find with a google search. MD/DO counterparts work between 40-60hrs/week but ~25% will work 61-80 hrs/week.
- Residency Match Rate - Regardless of the two new schools opening, it appears that podiatry match rate into residency is still much higher than that of DO/MD schools.
- Cost of School - MD/DO school 40-63,000 per year on average with most of the MD schools I was looking to apply to near 50-60,000/ year. Podiatry school is 35-45,000/year and offers merit based scholarships (MD/DO rarely, if ever, does).
- Poor Job Market - From viewing these forums I see that there is a problem currently with saturation. A lot of new graduates are unable to find jobs. Am I willing to live absolutely anywhere? Probably not. I want a family and I want my children to have access to opportunity. Am I okay with not living in NYC, LA, etc? Yes. Alternatively, am I okay with living in the middle of nowhere with a population <2,000? No.
- Significantly Lower Pay for Surgical Speciality - Red flag to me that salaries are hidden and extremely variable. There seems to be a legitimate possibility of <100,000/yr or no job at all. I know podiatry will not make me rich - I am interested in podiatry because I love the field. Nevertheless, I sadly cannot choose a job that doesn’t pay me enough to make ends meet.
- Lack of Public Awareness - I think podiatry as a field is very misunderstood by the general public. It appears that the public does view podiatrists as toenail specialists instead of specialized foot and ankle physicians. This affects the patient base for podiatry and the volume of certain cases podiatrists are treating. I like the mix of clinic, surgery, and small procedures. I like post-op follow ups and seeing people’s quality of life improve with medicine. How much of my job will that actually be? Is there a large chance I never see any of that, even if I am surgically trained?