Jacqui and Tony,
Your sentiments are understandable; the HPC has allowed parity without
ensuring competency and at the same time the independent ‘schools’ are
preparing to change the terminology of their correspondence courses so
their ‘graduates will use the terms, Foot Care Practitioners, Podologists,
Podiatric Specialists, Chiropodial Practitioners ….ad nauseum. What could
have been an opportunity to close the profession has degenerated into a
farce; diluting the professional base whilst leaving the back door wide
open to all.
You are quite right to be pissed off; just think how some of this year’s
graduates feel after completing 3-4 years study and incurring all the debt
along the way, only to find they needn’t have bothered. I am given to
understand that there is a twenty-one year-old beautician who has been
accepted onto the register by dint of having a portion of her income
derived from offering pedicures over the last three years. That’s got to be
the way to go in future – even Mike Batt’s crowd couldn’t compete with that
route for cost effectiveness!
What is more surprising is that the Premier Professional Body AKA the SCP
are also welcoming the unregistered with open arms. Even though their
Articles of Association specify that applicants from routes other than
accredited courses must first sit an exam set/approved by Council, non-
registered have been joining the Society in droves (well one or two anyway)
and been offered full membership with no differentiation between themselves
and existing members. In essence the SCP are endorsing the HPC’s mess! Now
if that’s raised the BP a little sit down, take some deep breaths and
prepare for this one…….
Not only are the SCP holding the doors wide open….so are some podiatry
managers in the National Health. I have it on good authority that two
members of SCP’s council (who, strangely enough, happen to be NHS podiatry
managers) are openly advocating employment of the non-registered alongside
the degree/diploma practitioner. Makes you wonder why you spent the last 20
years telling patients to ensure ‘their chiropodist was state registered’
doesn’t it? Getting angry now? Face flushed with rage? Well then, just stop
for a moment and consider our colleagues in orthopaedics who this week
declared ‘open warfare’ on podiatry because of the territorial encroachment
by podiatric surgeons who undertake distance learning and weekend courses
and qualify as ‘consultant surgeons’ in a fraction of the time that it
takes through the medical route. How could we possibly criticise the HPC
when we would be seen to be taking a duplicitous stance vis-ŕ-vis our own
[sic] activities? Consider also that the Council of the SCP is made up
predominately with Podiatric Surgeons and NHS managers and you might just,
through that boiling rage, begin to understand why we are in the mess we
are!
Jacqui – if you ever have a patient who said he was guidance and careers
master at Beath High School during the years 1973-1979 – stick an E11 in as
far as it goes please.
Yours despondently
Mark Russell
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