Recently, I was asked the question, “Why should a premedical student choose podiatry as a career?” At the risk of making our non-podiatric colleagues jealous (or angry), I’m going to give my answer here. At the outset, let me stipulate three things. First, all of the other medical professions have value, and I’m not saying one shouldn’t pursue them as a career. Second, the advantages of other fields will overlap many of the ideas I’ll put forth here, but it’s the combination of those advantages that’s important. Third, podiatry has problems, just like any other field, and I’m going to completely ignore them for another time. I’ve spent a good bit of time pointing out the challenges to our profession in other editorials, so here I’m going to focus on the positives.

Here’s the basic thesis:

Podiatrists have the opportunity to create highly unique, holistic, and unparalleled relationships with patients in a manner different from other medical professions.

Let’s start with the most important relationship: the one with the patient. Because podiatrists are both medically and surgically oriented, we are able to create relationships vastly different from other providers.

We perform surgical procedures of varying complexity but also treat many of our patients nonsurgically. As a result, we have long-term relationships with many of our patients, but these relationships are often highly intimate in a way someone outside the field would not expect. An internal medicine physician prescribes medicines (including injections) or refers to specialists. If I have a patient in pain, I can prescribe medicines, and I can refer. But I can also make orthoses, give injections, uses pads and inserts, perform physical therapy maneuvers, make braces, or do various invasive procedures both in the office and the operating room. What other medical profession can say that? Podiatrists have a toolbox full to the brim of options to help our patients, and this fact allows us to have these amazing multifaceted relationships with our patients.

Take for example a diabetic patient of mine (details modified for privacy). I met this diabetic female patient in the hospital where it was necessary to amputate a part of her foot. She was scared, and I took her through the surgery successfully in a positive manner. Performing a procedure is a highly intimate activity – you are literally entering a part of someone else’s body. We built a strong bond, and I continued to see her in the office after her surgery. She also had a wound on the other foot, and after a few weeks of nonsurgical attempts, I proposed another surgery. She trusted me and underwent the second surgery. She subsequently healed within one month of the procedure without any complications.

On the day she was officially healed, I congratulated her, and she explained how happy she was, not just because we saved her legs, but because every weekly visit to the office was always pleasant with a lot of smiles. She actually indicated she would be sad not to come to the office weekly. I’ll continue to see her regularly for foot care, shoes, and the like, but the point is that through all the stages of her healing, we built a relationship that no other provider could have. This is only one anecdote from one podiatrist, but I have a ton of these, and I’m sure every podiatrist has just as many as I do.

Contrast this with a friend of mine who’s an orthopedic surgeon. He’s a fantastic surgeon, but orthopedists are so surgically oriented that it becomes about the procedure with a potential loss of that relationship of which I speak. After fixing a foot deformity, he would not be the one to continue the care after the patient heals. That’s for others. Now, I’m not criticizing. We need specialists like that too, but that’s a different relationship than what podiatry potentially offers. And if you want that deeper relationship, then podiatry is for you.

Podiatrists also have the opportunity to build relationships with many other medical providers. I often work with many of the following (in random order): nurses of all stripes, nutritionists, rheumatologists, vascular surgeons, radiologists, interventional radiologists, cardiologists, primary care physicians, physiatrists, endocrinologists, physicians assistants, physical therapists, neurologists, pharmacists, prosthetists, and diabetes educators, among many others. I’ve even worked with hematologists and geneticists on occasion.

We are regional experts of the lower extremity and must be knowledgeable of the entire body to be truly successful. The reason this is so is because just about every disease in the body also affects the lower extremity. The next time you see a podiatrist, state any disease to him, and he’ll tell you how it affects the lower limb. This is why podiatrists must remain holistic in our view of the body and how it affects the foot and leg. A patient with heel pain might have a seronegative spondyloarthropathy or a lumbosacral radiculopathy or something local. Someone with numbness may have any number of diseases. The good podiatrist may not treat all these diseases, but s/he has to recognize them. This global holistic approach to diseases of a region of the body forces podiatrists to be universalists. And this is unique!

It’s not just a foot attached to a leg – it’s an organ of the body, just like any other, that requires a holistic and humanistic viewpoint. So, for those of you looking for a career in a medical field where you get to work with your hands, your mind, and your heart, podiatry is for you.