Podiatry is that medical care occupation that's invested in the information, treatment and protection against foot and related disorders. The point that there's a whole career invested in the foot, really reveals precisely how substantial and important the feet tend to be. There are so many problems that might go wrong with the feet, which will have such major effects for the quality of life, that special care is essential for that part of the body.
Podiatrists make use of a number of therapies to deal with disorders of the feet. Those conditions cover anything from minor lesions on the skin (like corns) to toenail conditions (such as fungal infected nails) to toe conditions (such as hallux valgus) to bone and joint problems (such as heel pain) to foot traumas (like bony injury). The treatment options range from very simple scalpel use to debride lesions on your skin to the highly trained process of managing an ingrown toenail painlessly to the use of foot orthoses to support different parts of the feet to the advice directed at athletes in relation to their training amounts and running shoes to managing the various joint disease conditions to using anything that they are able to to handle the issues of diabetes that could be fatal if not necessarily managed appropriately.
They are available in a multitude of work environments. They usually are in solo private practice, in group or community based clinics, in private hospitals or in consultant clinics for example joint disease hospitals, high risk foot clinics or sports injury centers and teaching centers of educational institutions. There are a wide variety of areas of expertise within podiatry. Some will take up an academic or research occupations.
The profession may be very distinct in very different countries. It varies from at one end, in the USA in which Podiatrists have got total medical, operative and prescription drug rights to take care of foot disorders to the other end where in some countries in Europe they are limited to easy superficial skin conditions. These differences in the scope and nature of practice is reflected in the education of podiatrists. In the USA, the podiatry training course is a 4 year post-graduate degree with the requirement of a three yr post degree residency after that prior to them getting licensed. In a few countries in Europe, it is a 1 or 2 year college or university based qualification. In countries like Australia and the UK, it's a four year undergrad degree, with all the surgical training being a post-grad program which all of them do not always follow. They're licenced to work after the 4 years, but without the need of surgical privileges.
The upcoming prospects for podiatry is a great one. That is just simply a question of demographics. The populace is getting more aged and the elderly have more foot conditions, so the demand for podiatry is likely to carry on growing steadily as time passes so long as the populace carry on and become older. Also, the dilemma in the obesity increasing incidence which is having an effect on each and every nation is only adding to a huge increased amount of the incidence of diabetes and its associated foot problems that are going to have to be taken care of. Additionally, physical exercise is being more widely strongly suggested to deal with the health and wellbeing outcomes of the obesity epidemic and that is going to lead to a lot more foot conditions as more people workout.