Students take podiatry services to the outback
by Geraldine Hinter
Taking
podiatry services to outback Indigenous communities presents an
exciting challenge for UniSA students and their lecturers, who
provide a unique outreach facility that is not offered by any other
university in Australia.
UniSA has been conducting podiatry clinics in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands for about 10 years. Now, the service has been expanded to include the Ngaanyatjarra Lands in Western Australia, with clinics run by a small team of final year podiatry students and their clinical supervisors, senior lecturer Dr Sara Jones or lecturer Ryan Causby.
"Outback clinics provide a great opportunity to expose podiatry students to clinical settings and other health professionals and conditions that they might not otherwise experience," Dr Jones said.
"Spending a week in an outback community helps students to develop their clinical skills and reasoning to a much greater level and gives them far more insight, understanding and appreciation of podiatry practice than a whole semester of theoretical teaching," she said.
"Most of the time students address foot problems by looking at footwear but the Ngaanyatjarra people don’t wear shoes so the range of foot problems is quite different. We don’t see footwear related problems like corns, calluses, ingrown toe nails or bunions."
A lot of the foot injuries in the outback are activity related, particularly during the football season. With limited facilities, students have to improvise using temporary padding and tape to treat injuries.
The biggest problem potentially is around diabetes, where loss of feeling in feet can result in many complications including infections that can lead to lower limb amputation.
"Our students take a holistic approach to podiatry, which gives them a much better understanding of not just feet and the conditions affecting them, but also social and equity issues and the various limitations associated with that," Causby said.
"A lot of work goes into assessing and educating patients, health workers and other people within the community about the need to monitor feet and seek help if there are problems.
"We are providing a sustainable, ongoing and reliable service that will be consistent in delivery into the future."