Podiatry Malpractice : What is a Podiatrist (internship, residency and fellowship)
INTERNSHIP, RESIDENCY & FELLOWSHIP
A majority of states do require one year of podiatric residency training for licensure after matriculation from podiatry school. However, this training is in no way standardized or uniform and can vary from state to state as well as from program to program.
Podiatry residency programs range from one to four years and fall within four different categories; Rotating Podiatric Residency (RPR); Primary Podiatric Medical Residency (PPMR) ; Podiatric Orthopedic Residency (POR) or Podiatric Surgical Residency (PSR). An internship is essentially defined as the first year of training. The PSR programs are further numerically differentiated as PSR-12, PSR-24, PSR-36 and PSR-48 which simply denote the number of months in the program. As their titles denote, each type of program exposes the resident to different aspects of podiatric care. Generally, a graduate of orthopedic and medical programs have limited surgical experiences.
Tip : Since extent and level of training may vastly differ amongst practitioners, the degree of training should be investigated in order to determine whether or not a defendant / expert was formally trained in the practice area or procedure. The resident log book may provide some insight into the exposure obtained during training.
Residents are required to keep logs of patient encounters, surgical cases scrubbed and their level of participation. Upon completion of the program, the program director certifies the accuracy of the logs. In order to complete a surgical program, the resident must satisfy a specific number of cases in different surgical categories. Upon completion, the log of procedures is submitted to the program director in order to satisfy certification requirements by the CPME and is usually kept by the individual resident for reference during the board certification process.
