Sallyanne Lightbown

Sallyanne Lightbown: Private podiatrist

In Sallyanne's words:

"As a generalist podiatrist working in private practice, I feel embedded within my local community. I never know what's coming through the door, which is exciting and keeps my skills broad. It's easy to become stuck in a routine, so I enjoy stepping out into new areas of podiatry, where I can explore my own interests. I actively connect with other podiatrists and AHPs to prevent me from silo-working. The College's Branches are great for networking."

Sallyanne's experience:

Sallyanne reports often acting as a buffer to support GPs and AHPS by seeing clients with general foot problems, providing treatment, or signposting to relevant services. This is a similar concept to the First Contact Practitioner role. Sallyanne summarises this well, highlighting three areas:

• Gatekeeping - keeping clients out of the NHS services by providing frontline treatments and reducing unnecessary referrals
  
  
• Educating - providing clients with health promoting advice with their general and foot health to enable these individuals to manage self-care
  
  
• Signposting - providing clients with appropriate services or referrals to avoid wasted delays for care or treatments

Additional support at work

Despite facing the challenges of dyslexia, Sallyanne has found ways to manage her learning differences to enable her to continue working with ease. She uses assistive technology such as Dragon Naturally Speaking software, which allows her to write letters for patients, and notes for continued professional development. Additionally, she finds that speakers who use different fonts and allow extra time to process information during webinars can be helpful for engagement of continued professional development.

In light of Sallyanne sharing her experience, it is evident that podiatrists can benefit from adopting inclusive practices to cater to individual learning differences, and by understanding and incorporating support mechanisms the podiatry community can create an environment that supports the success of all professionals.