Why Three-Year Podiatry Programs May Be Worth Another Look

I have recently heard rumors that podiatry schools may be revisiting the idea of three-year programs. The logic is that the expense of four years of podiatry school does not fit the anticipated reduction in physician reimbursement due to the Affordable Care Act.    I am living proof that three years is enough time to spend in podiatry school. I went through a “four-year” program at the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine (OCPM) from 1970-1974. My classmates jokingly referred to it as 2.5 years of education crammed into four.    Before I alienate all the fans of OCPM, I would like to acknowledge that I had some great professors who I continue to value. Sadly, I had some who were pathetic. The college saved a few bucks by hiring a dentist to teach gross anatomy. He was a nice enough guy but he seemed to simply read passages from Gray’s Anatomy to our class. A pharmacist taught us pharmacology simply by reading to us from the United States Pharmacopeia. “Remember, doctors, gauze USP” was the opening line of his first class.    The physiology teacher was a snarly little chain smoker who claimed to have a PhD. The class behind me did some research into his background and it turned out that he was a hospital lab tech who had done one year in a medical school.    Immersion with a herd of incompetent instructors with questionable credentials was only part of the problem. The government decided to offer sizeable capitation grants to schools based on the number of enrolled students. My class grew to 105 students. The largest classroom in the school held 75. The school sent the rest to another classroom and televised the classes. Many times, the auxiliary classroom was full of cassette recorders while the students were in the crowded snack bar playing cards.    Since we were a crowded class, it was not possible to have all of us in clinics after completing our second year. We took turns at three-month intervals. There were no outside clinics and the school frowned on externships.    I was serving in an Army reserve hospital unit. Our unit worked in a local public health clinic and since I was in podiatry school, I was the foot specialist. This was a lifesaver since I was getting very little patient care experience at the school clinic.    I asked the medical director of the clinic if he would like to have other podiatry students help at the clinic. He said yes so I proposed the idea to the dean of the college and caught hell for proposing something that might make the college seem inadequate.    Since I believed this dean was full of crap, I bounced the idea off an MD who was the school clinic director. He loved the idea and to this day, students are serving in the McCafferty Health Center on Lorain Avenue.    This was not my last encounter with the good dean. I was accepted for a summer externship in a Seattle hospital connected with a quality surgical residency program. Since the externship conflicted with my one-month summer clinic session, I had to ask the dean for a schedule change. He said no and demanded that I not participate in a hospital externship. His reason was that I would come back and tell my classmates what a great experience it was and then they would all demand externships. I promised not to tell my classmates about my experience and he reluctantly granted the change.    At the end of the summer, I told all my classmates what a great experience I had and the demands started. Now every student gets multiple opportunities to participate in external hospital and clinical programs.    You are no doubt wondering what any of this has to do with a change to a three-year curriculum.    My fourth year consisted of about four months of clinic and no classes. I completed my clinics in November of 1973 and that was it. I asked the school president if I could just pick up my diploma and go. He told me no because this was a four-year program. I asked if I had to pay tuition for a semester with no classes or clinics. He assured me that tuition was expected if I wanted to graduate in the spring. I handed him the check and let him know that this was my last donation to the college.    A three-year podiatry curriculum is possible if we reduce class sizes to a reasonable level and colleges take care to ensure all of the instructors are qualified and competent.    The best instructor I had was Michael Forman, DPM. Thanks Dr. Forman for being a dedicated and quality professor.    Dr. McCord retired from practice in 2008 at the Centralia Medical Center in Centralia, Wash.