Spending The Time And Making The Effort To ‘Make It Look Easy’ In Podiatry

In the Forum column in the September 2017 issue of Podiatry Today, I presented a few memorable quotes that I have amassed over the past 35 years in podiatric practice. After a recent experience, I heard a new quote that I have found to be very profound and worth pondering.  

After getting an examination at my cardiologist’s office a few months ago, my doctor and I began our frequent discussion about the state of medicine, particularly students, patients and residents. We are not very happy with the way we perceive things to be going in medicine. Just about at the end of our conversation, the cardiologist said: “We make it look easy.”

While driving home, I couldn’t get what he said out of my mind. The more I thought about the statement, the more it summed up where we podiatric physicians need to be in order to provide quality care to our patients and to be able to teach students and residents.

Whether it is a golfer on the PGA tour, a forward of the Los Angeles Lakers, the conductor of the Boston Pops or your plumber, we are enamored how these professionals make their respective crafts look easy. Maybe someone is even looking at you and thinking the same about how you practice lower extremity medicine.

In reality, do we see how much time professionals spend practicing, watching game tapes and apprenticing for countless hours in countless professions? Do you know it takes 10,000 hours or 10 years to become an “expert,” or so the opinion goes?

Picture the number of hours you spent studying in school and taking boards. Picture the hours you spent in residency so you could absorb surgical skills and link your didactic knowledge to clinical scenarios. How about the time you spent at conferences and keeping abreast of the medical literature? How about the responsibility of literally having the patient’s foot and ankle as well as the patient’s well-being in your hands? If you did all this right and conscientiously, there was a boatload of hours you had to log to get where you are in practice and, maybe more importantly, maintain your skill set and knowledge base for your patients.

After all, any physician is a professional in his or her own piece of the medical rubric. Just like that pro golfer practices putting, we too have to practice medicine and then practice some more. To do it right, what drives us includes going to the conferences, doing the scientific reading and undertaking the quest to provide the best possible care for patients. Podiatric physicians don’t complete a competition and get a large trophy, but every patient encounter is the opportunity to achieve a victory of sorts, if only to soothe pain, eliminate a deformity or ameliorate a malady. A heartfelt “thank you” from a patient after receiving care goes a long way to letting you know what you did for the patient was well worth it.

I doubt if any patient would ever say “Doc, you make it look easy.” However, the more time we spend in preparation for a surgical case, discussing issues with patients, retaining the quest for knowledge and being somewhat in awe and humble about what we do, we can make it look easy. We all know and acknowledge it is anything but simple if you calculate all it took to “make it look easy” and continue to do so.

Putting in the hours is a good way to achieve continued success. Now go make it look easy. Patients are always watching you practice medicine and if they really thought about it, they might think we podiatrists do make it look easy. Little do they know ...

Dr. Wallace is the Director of the Podiatry Service and the Medical Director of Ambulatory Care Services at University Hospital in Newark, N.J.

For further reading, see “A Few Memorable Quotes After 35 Years In Podiatry” in the September 2017 issue of Podiatry Today, “Dear Incoming Podiatric Medical Student” in the October 2017 issue or “If I Had It To Do All Over Again, Would I Still Choose Podiatry As A Profession?” in the April 2018 issue. To access the archives, go to www.podiatrytoday.com.