Case study: return to work

Jayne Robbie

Jane is a Senior Lecturer in Diabetes Care at Birmingham City University, Specialist Podiatrist at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, Diabetes UK Clinical Champion, Advance HE Senior Fellow

After qualifying in 1987, Jayne maximised her early career growth by converting her Diploma into a Bachelor’s Honours Degree, swiftly obtained a Masters, and gained a post-graduate certificate in Further Education within her first five years of practice. This learning enabled Jayne to secure a leadership role Chief 4 in the NHS after advancing through Senior 1 and 2 posts.

However, in 2003, Jayne stepped out of the profession to support her ex-husband who had started a new business. This meant relocating, changing job role to work within his business, and leaving NHS work. To keep up-to-date, Jayne began part-time private work, ensuring her CPD was up-to-date and in line with HCPC requirements, and renewing her membership with RCPod. In 2010, when she no longer needed to continue her role in supporting the family business, Jayne began exploring opportunities to return to podiatry on a full-time basis.

After a long career break and reflection, Jayne knew she needed some additional support in upskilling to get the best out of the profession and herself, despite never actually leaving the HCPC register and still providing part-time podiatry services. That’s when she met Sarah, through the Royal College of Podiatry’s (then known as Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists) return to practice website. Jayne requested mentorship from Sarah after noticing how their values aligned.

Mentor: Sarah Guyll: Specialist podiatrist in MSK and private practice owner

After operating a successful private podiatry practice, Sarah felt as though her career had begun coasting within her comfort zone. Keen to explore new challenges, Sarah signed up to offer mentorship after seeing an advertisement in the RCPod magazine. After accepting a mentorship request from Jayne to support her  transition back into work, Sarah reflected on the benefits it brought to her professional growth: “Mentoring another podiatrist gave me a chance to reflect on my current practice and challenge this for the better; supporting others contributed to my way of working as everybody brings something new”.

The mentoring process

Jayne and Sarah built bridges across the public and private sectors of working and found it to be beneficial for them both. Sarah found that over time it was difficult to keep connections with NHS colleagues going, but by supporting Jayne’s return into the NHS, Sarah learned more about protocols and the language used by the NHS teams.

Jayne found it beneficial to understand how the private and public sector relationship supports foot care provision to patients, and explained, “We need to be more collaborative: I provided cover for Sarah during her holidays, and I could see how bridges could be built with private being more prevention-based and using health promotion techniques, and thereby supporting the NHS.”

Jayne’s advice:

“I thought accessing mentorship might be difficult, but it was very empowering. If you’re looking to access mentorship, come to your mentor with questions, thoughts, and ideas – you’ll take what you put in’.

Sarah’s advice:

“I thought I’d be worried about having another podiatrist treat my patients and that this would be a concern for me, but the patients loved being treated by both me and Jayne. It brought two different views to one treatment and the patient appreciated this, as did I.”