What is Podiatry all about?

Podiatry is that health care profession that is devoted to the understanding, treatment and prevention of foot and related conditions. The fact that there is a whole profession devoted to the foot, just indicates how serious and important the feet are. There are so many problems that can go wrong with the feet, that can have such big impacts on the quality of life, that extra care is needed for that body part.

Podiatrists make use of a wide range of treatments to deal with problems of the feet. Those problems range from minor skin lesions (such as corns) to toenail problems (such as ingrown toenails) to toe problems (such as bunions) to musculoskeletal problems (such as plantar fasciitis) to foot traumas (such as fractures). The treatment options range from simple scalpel work to debride skin lesions to the highly skilled task of dealing with an ingrown toenail painlessly to the use of foot orthotics to support different areas of the foot to the advice given to runners with regards to their training loads and running shoes to managing the different arthritis conditions to using everything that they can to manage the complication of diabetes that can be fatal of not managed properly.

Podiatrists can be found in a wide variety of work places. They can be in solo private practice, in group or community based clinics, in hospitals or in specialist clinics such as arthritis clinic, high risk foot clinics or sport injury clinics and teaching clinics of universities. There are a wide variety of specialities within podiatry. Some will purse academic or research careers.

The profession is very different in very different countries. It ranges from at one end, in the USA where Podiatrists have full medical, surgical and pharmaceutical privileges to manage foot problems to the other end where in some European countries they are limited to simple superficial skin conditions. These differences in the scope and nature of practice is reflected in the education of podiatrists. In the USA, the podiatry qualification is a 4 year post-graduate degree with the requirement for a 3 yr residency after that before they get licensed. In some European countries, it is a one or two year college based qualification. In countries like Australia and the UK, it is a 4 year undergraduate degree, with the surgical training being a post-graduate program that all of them do not necessarily pursue. They are licenced to practice after the 4 years, but without surgical privileges.

The future prospects for podiatry is good. That is simply one of demographics. The population is getting older and older people have more foot problems, so the demand for podiatry is going to continue to grow steadily over time as long as the population continue to get older. Also, the crisis in the obesity epidemic that is affecting every country is only fuelling a massive increase in the prevalence of diabetes and its associated foot complication that are going to need to be managed. Additionally, physical exercise is being more widely advocated to deal with the health consequences of the obesity epidemic and that is going to lead to more foot problems as more people exercise.