A day as a podiatrist
You could be working in a community clinic or in a hospital department. Wherever you work, you’ll come across a range of different of patients on a regular basis.
The first thing you’ll do is look at what patients you’ll be seeing that day. In the morning, you are seeing patients who are at risk of damaging their feet quite easily, usually because of a condition that they have, such as diabetes or kidney failure. You assess their lower limbs to see how healthy they are, use padding and splints to manage skin that might be easily damaged, and give medicines to patients with infections.
In the afternoon you transfer to another site where you lead a clinic where you are working with children with muscle and bone problems in their foot and leg. You spend most of your time measuring their lower limb function, providing them exercise programmes and advice.
You get to spend more time with your patients than many other health staff, so patients can really explain what’s going on in their lives and you can look at their lower limb care holistically.