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Hi everyone,

I've been asked by a colleague whether there is any private/public practice in Australia that has a podiatrist and physiotherapist working alongside each other to manage patients.

My first thought that there isn't, and the closest to this would be pods/physios working together in a falls prevention clinic.

Do any of you know differently?


Thanks, Adam

I use to run a very effective and mutually beneficial clinical gait and posture analysis clinic with my local private physiotherapist. We would examine the patient jointly and take footage of posture and gait to examine in finer detail after the patient went home.

We would then jointly write a report and provide recommendations on any interventions that might be worthwhile, and present it to the patient and answer any questions.

Was quite popular, but very time consuming. We both gained a greater understanding of each other's profession, and my hip and spine assessment skills improved 10-fold...

Just an example.

LL

Many multi-modality sports clinics here in Melbourne have teams of practitioners very closely aligned in patient management - physio+pod+chiro+remedial therapist+nutritionists+sports medico, etc. These teams usually work extremely well & manage sports and non-sports people alike.

I know a Physio who is about to finish his Pod undergrad. - I'm sure he'll be working very closely with himself... :)

Thanks LL & PodAus for replying!

LL: What halted the arrangement with the physio that you had? Expense?

Hi worked in same clinic with physio, worked together on clients, change in rooms meant no space, we went our seperate ways, but still work closely together.. hj

I do a clinic with a physio and an orthotist. Its a childrens "boot clinic" where we see children from 18 months to 15 years old. Most of them have some form of disability (downs, CP etc). The role of the podiatrist is to apply biomechanical principles to the prescription of the surgical boots (piedros and similar) and assist in the prescriptions of AFO's GRAFO's DAFO's etc. The physio consults on the role of active therapy and fits the boots / devices into their physiotherapy program and the orthotist sources the devices and prescribes the larger out-of-shoe devices and footwear.

It works rather well. Working with the orthotist in particular provides an interesting insight into how other professions deal with feet.

Regards

Robert

I work in a clinic with 5 physiotherapists which works well. This allows me to be brought into the physio consultations at times for an opinion on the benefit of referral for podiatry care in addition to the physio visits. It seems often a patients first point of call for a foot related problem will be a physio rather than a podiatrist.