Academy News: Podiatric Medicine

by Bob Smith, Podiatric Medicine Academy Chair

I can only imagine that all members of the National Academies of Practice are embracing 2024 of a year forecasting exciting and new opportunities either academically or within our practices arriving at our doorsteps. I reflect on this will be my fifth year as Podiatry Academy Chair and the responsibilities that role means. My fellow, professional, and emeritus members have given me a great privilege to voice their opinions and desires for the future of our small academy.  I am deeply grateful for their continued membership and participation as they see fit.  It is with great sadness that our academy lost one of our leaders who at one time was an emeritus member in December 2023.  Our ranks did grow by one member which delighted our entire academy.   

We as an academy have recognized that our academy is diverse in our academics, practice style, experience, geography, belief systems, and demographics reflecting our profession.  A relative observation is that our present membership resides within similar defined generational quartile. Among the podiatry academy membership, we have witness technology changes evolve academically and with our practices from handwritten notes, dictation, type to word-processing, Dragon™ voice activation, to electronic health records and electronic prescribing. The newest diagnostic and treatment marvels dominate our professional lives and innovations of our personal lives.  One of our academy members offered the observation and reflection of travel technology growing our world seems smaller giving rise to transitional citizenship.  At this time watching sunrises and sunsets, day by day and year by year I come to familiar of Susan Sontag’s profound observation:

"Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."

My academy would like to share that the keystone belief for the podiatric membership is to work as a team member using interprofessional strategies, techniques, and work to assist those citizens who now reside in “that other place” to achieve Justice for them and allow them to thrive as they move from the “kingdom sick” to the “kingdom of well”.  In spite our membership numbers being small we teach our peers, residents, and students the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion by breaking out of the podiatry silos and actively pursuing interprofessional collaboration with care.