Residency Insight -- A PRESENT Podiatry eZine

We are All Ambassadors to Podiatry Everyday

Ryan Fitzgerald, DPM
PRESENT RI Associate Editor
Hess Orthopedics &
Sports Medicine
Harrisonburg, Virginia

I recently had the opportunity to participate in the Virginia Podiatric Medical Association’s Legislative day in Richmond, and wanted to share with you several insights that I gleaned from that experience. The event was designed to allow Podiatric Physicians in Virginia to meet with our elected state representatives to address several pressing issues here in the Commonwealth—among these include a recent exclusion of Podiatric services from Medicaid, which we’re fighting to appeal, as well as various scope of practice issues—and to demonstrate who we are and what it is that we do within the healthcare community.

This was a great opportunity, and I was excited to participate, but it definitely highlighted a fundamental misunderstanding in the value of podiatric medicine. The representatives that I met with were very interested in learning more about our specialty, and were amazed to learn the cost-savings associated with the preventative care that we provide. There was no sense of an anti-podiatry attitude –they simply did not know.

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There has been a lot of talk recently about the future of our profession –and my colleague Jarrod Shapiro, DPM has recently written an excellent article on “Branding Podiatric Medicine” and there has been a great deal of discussion on this topic on the eTalk thread on this topic. It is important to truly understand the concept of branding. A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business and as such, can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. The word brand began simply as a way to tell one person's cattle from another by means, of a hot iron stamp, a skin cauterization in a recognizable shape. As clinicians, we need to understand how we are perceived as a specialty and be ready and able to address any potential gaps in understanding that might arise. This is particularly true for young practitioners, such as our residents, but these individuals are entering the clinical environment with the greatest momentum.

"Each day we practice our craft, we are ambassadors to our profession."

Each day we practice our craft, we are ambassadors to our profession. People notice, and perception passes through communities like waves on the ocean. You have the opportunity each day to present your “brand” to the community. How do you wish to be perceived? It may seem an obvious point, but sometimes it is valuable to critically evaluate your practice and interaction in the community to assess the impact that you are making. Each of us has the opportunity to generate positive (or negative) impression—how can we appropriately manage the image that we provide in the community? What does this mean on a day-to-day basis?

These are important questions which each of us must answer—and must answer every day. What does this mean for current residents? How does this translate to those of us who has been in practice for a year or more? Each of us WILL be the representative for podiatric medicine in our community—we do it everyday. The question only remains as to how you and I will represent our growing specialty.

In this—as in so many other things—attitude is everything. Your attitude concerning your profession will show through in your interactions with your colleagues and patients, and people notice. I have observed that often there is a disparity among older and younger podiatric physicians regarding their perceptions of who and what we are. There are few, if any, wrong answers to these questions, but the first step, regardless of whether you are a rearfoot trauma guru or the ultimate biomechanist, is to start (and end) with a positive attitude.

"People will notice, and it will become your legacy."

All too often it seems that we in podiatry enter into our collegial interactions with a chip on our shoulder, because we expect these individuals to look down on Podiatry for whatever reason. These are SELF-IMPOSED limitations. Eleanor Roosevelt once said: "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission”—so don’t give it. Engage in each patient and colleague interaction with the hard-earned confidence that you’ve developed throughout your medical education, residency training, and clinical practice and know that you are truly the lower extremity expert. People will notice, and it will become your legacy.

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