Jarrod Shapiro, DPM Practice Perfect Editor Assistant Professor Dept. of Podiatric Medicine Surgery & Biomechanics College of Podiatric Medicine Western University of Health Sciences St. Pomona, CA

Sharing Resources in
Podiatry Education

After a recent computer debacle where my computer died and my wife was the happy recipient of a new computer, while transferring files she accidentally erased some photos from her computer. As she had a bunch of videos remaining, she wanted to turn the videos into still images, but was having trouble doing it herself. So she did the next logical step: she went to the internet. Within a couple of minutes, she found the answer and is happily making still pictures of the videos.

Of all the institutions of modern society today, it seems the Internet remains the most egalitarian and community-oriented. In medicine, we talk about interprofessional health care, team approaches to patient intervention, and medical home, but we have nothing on the Internet.

In many ways, the Internet has evolved naturally to be a giant community in which millions of people interact and share information to accomplish their varied goals. Just consider how much of the Internet is free. Take the simplest part, email. The vast majority of Internet users have a free email account. Compare this with the federal mail in which we pay to send mail. Think of Wikipedia. Do you remember the last time you paid to get information from Wikipedia? That’s right, never. The entire point is that information is made available to all and created by that same community.

The same is true for the ever-increasing free online content that is distributed by various universities and businesses. If I want to learn about statistics, I can take a free course taught by Johns Hopkins faculty via the iTunes University application. Similarly, organizations such as the Khan Academy are participating in the revolution of online education.

		Tonight's Premier Lecture is Antibiotics for Osteomyelitis: Bone Headed or Brilliant? by Warren Joseph, DPM, FIDSA

With this movement in which shared resources are available to all, I wonder where podiatric medicine fits? If we ask ourselves honestly, can we say we pool our resources to achieve something greater than our individual efforts can accomplish?

I’ll take my hometown as an example. In the Los Angeles metro area, we have about 12 residency programs. For the most part, each of these programs are working separately to educate their residents.  With the exception of Tuesday morning conferences at Western U in which all residencies are invited to participate, it’s very rare that these programs will intermix to any significant degree.

But what if this were different? What if instead of remaining in their own isolated silos, the programs in this area got together and pooled resources? What would residency training look like if we figured out that residency A was very strong on academics, while residency B had a fully functioning simulation lab, and residency C had an attending that was expert at a particular set of surgical procedures? Imagine the improvement to the residents’ training by pooling these resources.

How many residencies have a fully functioning simulation lab? I’ll bet that number is very low. But imagine how powerful the education would become if residencies  (whether locally or nationally) banded together to expose our residents to their particular strengths.

Everyone talks about standardizing residency training, but we all know this is impossible as long as each program does its own thing. Just as PRESENT e-Learning Systems and ACFAS are excellent at education and APMA is strong with advocacy and governmental action (though there is some overlap), each of our residencies has their particular strengths.

1. Push the podiatric colleges to work together rather than be in pure competition. Recently, one of my partners at Western U CPM began working together with the faculty of the Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine at Rosalind Franklin University to add them to our Tuesday weekly conference. This is an example of partnership that will only lead to improved education.
2. Residencies in urban locations where several programs are geographically close should meet up and discuss strengths, weaknesses, and areas of mutual potential benefit. They should share resources (whatever those resources turn out to be).
3. Solo residencies should consider contacting other programs, and, using Internet communications technology, put on educational programs.
4. Consider attending programs like the PRESENT Residency Summits where both residents and their attendings will have opportunities to forge relationships and begin coalitions.
5. Consider resident exchange programs in which residents from one program switch with residents from a different program for two to three months. The devil is in the details on this one – most significantly on the funding issue – but this would be an excellent opportunity for our residents to gain so many new and unique experiences they otherwise would never have.

These are just a few ideas. Imagine the kind of progress we could make in student and resident education if we were to communicate more and share resources. I hope to see more of these types of relationships as podiatric medicine follows the example of the Internet. Good luck with your teaching endeavors.

Best wishes.

Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Practice Perfect Editor
[email protected]

Get a steady stream of all the NEW PRESENT Podiatry eLearning by becoming our Facebook Fan. Effective eLearning and a Colleague Network await you.

Major Sponsor