Taking Steps in the Right Direction:
Building your Pedorthic Practice
After you have established a relationship with a physician’s
practice, you must continue to nurture it. Check in with staff
members, update with them with the latest happenings of your
business. Make in person visits to their facilities. This will keep
you in tune to what is needed in their practice and keep you
fresh in their minds. We cannot stress enough, to be available!
That means promptly addressing their concerns, by email,
phone, or text. A huge part of the job is keeping everyone you
deal with content.
One of the best ways to keep everyone happy
is to achieve compliance with patients: All
the proper instruction and equipment will
be of little use if the patient doesn’t comply.
For example, convincing the geriatric patient
to change their lifestyle to achieve healthier
and more active mobility is a valuable skill
which can determine success or failure in the
treatment plan.
We have patients who are in their mid-eighties that play tennis
every day. However, we also have patients in their fifties who can
barely walk from the chair to the treatment room. It is our duty
as foot health care professionals to see that our patients are able
to be active every day of their life. The difficulty is that a person’s
knees hips and back are not really designed to go seventy, eighty,
or even ninety years but forty or fifty years, maximum. Therefore,
the preservation of these joints becomes paramount.
Comfort
Finn
Educating the patient is paramount. Providing
foot care tips and explaining how crucial it is to
change out their inserts every four months and
wearing socks seems repetitive, yet extremely
important reminders for your patients! Take the
time to talk about the risks of poor choices as
well as the benefits of compliance as it pertains
to their treatment.
Kolding
If you can’t succeed in getting your patients
to wear their healthy shoes and, if applicable,
their orthotics as much as possible, then you
have failed to benefit that patient and probably
lost their future business. But how do you stress
the importance of this to a patient without
being too casual, scolding, or too technical?
The world of shoes is a mish mash of extremely
unhealthy but popular designs that are made
to please the eyes, rather than the feet, as well
as a never ending cycle of gimmicks that fade
as fast as the fashions. So which should your
patients choose? Is it OK to comp