First contact practitioner podiatrist - resources

First contact podiatrists network

The Royal College of Podiatry has a support network for first contact podiatrists that meets bimonthly. All podiatrists involved in first contact roles can be added to the distribution list or podiatrists who are wanting to learn more are also welcome to attend.

For further information, please email: contact@rcpod.org.uk

Clinical case studies and career journeys

• A case of Freiberg’s disease in a nine-year-old girl
• A case of undiagnosed DVT
• Jose M San-Roman-Sirvent - career journey of an international podiatrist

Further resources

If you are an existing first contact podiatrist or a podiatrist needing support to transition and develop their role into primary care, these resources will support your cases and progression alongside essential documents. 

Roadmaps

• Podiatrists as first contact practitioners
• The MSK Roadmap to Practice
  
• Royal College of Podiatry MSK toolkit
• Musculoskeletal capabilities framework
• Diabetes capabilities framework
• International working group on the diabetic foot guidelines (2023)
• A best practice clinical care pathway for peripheral arterial disease (2022)

Links to the national wound care strategy programme

• Lower limb. Recommendations for clinical care
• Preventing and improving care of chronic lower limb wounds. Implementation case

Podiatric surgery: career pathway

• How to become a podiatric surgeon
• Podiatric surgery: a cost effective solution to reducing elective waits (2021)

National documents library

Next steps for integrating primary care: Fuller stocktake report

This is the final report of the stocktake undertaken by Dr Claire Fuller, Chief Executive-designate Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System and GP on integrated primary care, looking at what is working well, why it’s working well and how we can accelerate the implementation of integrated primary care (incorporating the current 4 pillars of general practice, community pharmacy, dentistry and optometry) across systems. 26 May 2022. 

Integrating additional roles into primary care networks

The Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) was introduced in England in 2019 as a key part of the government’s manifesto commitment to improve access to general practice. The scheme aims to support the recruitment of 26,000 additional staff into general practice. The King’s Fund takes a look at the opportunities and challenges.  4 March 2022

For updates on ARRS roles for presentation at the Faculty of Podiatric Surgery conference, there is a primary care page relating to resources for ARRS.

Explanation of primary care networks

Primary Care Networks (PCNs) build on existing primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care for people close to home. Clinicians describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively caring for the people and communities they serve.