How I came to work at St Mary’s - Part Two

Previously I talked about how I got my job at St Mary’s and in this instalment, I will tell you how I set up the new inpatient service.

It was literally a blank canvas and we had the Head of Therapies as our liaison manager, but it was up to us to develop it. 

We began by making initial contact with Heads of Department and introducing ourselves. This included the Care of Elderly team, Orthopaedics in Care of the Elderly, Rheumatology, Paediatrics, A&E, the Inpatient & Outpatient Physiotherapy teams and Occupational teams to name a few. 

We had to get our face known so we started attending the consultant led ward rounds and, after one of the junior doctors presented the history, diagnosis and treatment plan, we would lift off the bed covers and assess the feet and display our expertise.

However, before we could approach the teams, we had to begin by finding a room to act as our office space. 

So far the only provision that had been made was hiring of the 2 podiatrists. We had no office, no desk, and no chair and not even a locker. I remember having to lug my rucksack with my computer, which was only accessible to the CLCH network, not even the St Mary’s network. 

I remember using the Head of Therapies’ waiting room as our main point of contact, or sometimes the main outpatients’ waiting room. She was not best pleased to see us! 

Or we could hot desk within the lecture theatres where we had our initial introduction to the Trust. Within a month, we were very good at finding space to work from!

We also had to work out how the wards could contact us, and how they could refer to us. Luckily, we were given a bleep.

The rest of the logistics took about 4-6 months, until then, we would check on each ward individually to see if they had a referral for us. We also had to think about how to collate our data and how to present it every quarter to CLCH management to measure our success rates. We ensured that every patient we saw, was recorded.

Oh and the best thing was, once we were known to the wards, no provision had been made for giving us instruments for cutting patient’s toes nails, or scalpels, for dealing with their corns!

In the next instalment, I talk about how we used our skills to teach staff how to management foot care.