Comparing Self-Perceived Awareness to Actual Awareness of the Podiatric Profession Among High School and College Students.

Background: Over the past few years there has been a decrease in the number of applicants applying to podiatric medical school. It has been suggested that this may be due to unfamiliarity with the profession of podiatric medicine. The goal of this study is to shed light on the misconceptions and lack of awareness of podiatric medicine so that the profession can better bridge the gap in knowledge with a resultant strategy to better increase recruiting efforts. It is hypothesized that high school and college students will overestimate their awareness of podiatry and that a significant percentage of students will have a low actual awareness of the profession. It is presumed that this shortfall will be greater in high school students.

Methods: An eight question self-completion survey was created using RedCap that analyzed self-perceived and actual awareness of the podiatric profession. 318 students, 171 high school and 147 college, attending school within the state of Arizona completed the survey to test their actual and perceived knowledge of podiatry.

Results: A total of 294 survey responses met the inclusion criteria and were used in the final evaluation of data. 57.1% of high school students and 47.9% of college students described their knowledge of podiatry as "poor". Each of the five true/false questions were answered incorrectly over 50% of the time. Overall, there was a statistically significant association between student's perceived knowledge of podiatry (good and higher, fair or poor) compared to their actual knowledge of podiatry.

Conclusion: Evidence supports that many high school and undergraduate students are unaware of the podiatric profession. Furthermore, there are many misconceptions that are believed about the profession that could be causing a decline in applicants over the last few years.