Learning from those outside your normal realm of experience is always intellectually broadening, and I’m delighted when I’m exposed to an idea from someone outside of podiatry. It’s instructive to incorporate others’ experiences and perspectives into our profession.

A major example of this is the work by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. He and his partner Amos Tversky’s work, summed up in the book Thinking Fast and Slow, focuses on the social psychological aspects of human decision-making in the face of uncertainty. This research, initially aimed at improving the training of the Israeli military, was later recognized in the general community and economics in particular, revolutionizing the way economists think about decision-making. This cross-specialty application from psychology into economics stems from the obvious parallels between these two fields.

In a smaller way, a personal connection in my life outside of podiatry has important potential implications. Enter my sister, a successful public school teacher at a school that focuses on STEM education. We commonly share perspectives about teaching – her high school kids and my podiatric students and residents – and she often reveals important aspects of education, especially considering she has formal training in education and I do not. During a recent conversation, my sister informed me about a growing trend in teaching called the Professional Learning Community.

From this conversation, I immediately noted the connection between educating elementary and high school students and educating podiatric medical students and residents. Although concepts surrounding these two educational models – pedagogy (teaching children) and andragogy (teaching adults) – are not always the same, there are important overlaps, and one of them is the professional learning community (PLC).

A PLC, according to Wikipedia, is “a method to foster collaborative learning among colleagues within a particular work environment or field. It is often used in schools as a way to organize teachers into working groups of practice-based professional learning¹.” In essence, it is a group of educators who come together to discuss, in a focused manner, how to best teach their students.

For our purposes, it’s instructive to review what the creators of this process feel are the critical components of a PLC²:

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“A podiatric residency Professional Learning Community would have the shared value of graduating the best-trained podiatrists. It would do so by stimulating positive change through improved program interaction”

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Consider these characteristics, for a moment, as they would apply to educating podiatric residents. A regional or national podiatric residency PLC would have the shared value of graduating the best-trained podiatrists. They would focus on resident education via having meetings that include collaborating together instead of independently hoarding and protecting those methods that worked for a particular program. These discussions would include sharing educational resources, experience, and methods that have been successful or not so successful. This would produce a growth effect that would greatly improve our education by stimulating positive change through improved program interaction. If I could do something to positively affect the training of students and residents, why would I not want to participate?

It has been recommended that PLCs focus on four questions³:

As someone who spends a lot of time training students and residents, these are truly the four fundamental questions that must be asked. Imagine what our student and resident training would look like if we came together either locally, regionally, or nationally, pooled our resources, and used each other’s experiences and specific expertise to move podiatric education forward.

Now, I’m not saying podiatrists never work together for residency education – that would be silly. Of course, they do. We have important organizations such as the American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine (AACPM), the Council on Teaching Hospitals (COTH), the Council on Faculties (COF), and many other organizations working to build strong podiatric education and a strong podiatric presence in the medical community, and I applaud all of those leaders working on our behalf.

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“Improving the educational outcomes for all of our students and residents in the long run only helps the profession as a whole”

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However, what we don’t have is a cohesive learning community with a specific focus on improving the educational quality of podiatic student and resident training. We seem to have a much more competitive process where each school and residency is trying to get the best applicants and fill their seats for that year. To me, that’s a problem that is in the purview of administrative leadership of the schools and residencies. What we don’t seem to realize as a profession is that improving the educational outcomes for all of our students and residents in the long run only helps the profession as a whole. Similarly, poorly trained podiatrists who do substandard work hurt us all. Short-term notoriety and caché for one program at the expense of others only helps that one program in the short term and not the profession. We need to make ourselves better by working together.