"chiropodial expertise"????

Your comment, "Whats going to happen to all those patients in need of experienced chiropodial expertise.. and some of us have that." is quite amusing .

Please define "chiropodial expertise" . As far as I can tell the public doesn't care about chiropodial expertise at all --they want free treatments. One lady came in with 5 deep intractable plantar corns. Each one took about 5 minutes to enucleate, then I did her nails. She thanked me and paid $25. I didn't see her for 3 months and then I bumped into her at a local plaza. She once again expressed her gratitude for my treatment (wow I thought, now she's going to tell me that she's going to phone for an app't in the next week or two) then she surprised me by comparing the effectiveness of my treatment --it lasted 2 months but when her MD did the corn removal treatment she was back in pain in just 2 weeks. (So I thought now for sure she's going to assure me about coming to see me soon.) So she was annoyed that her MD wasn't as good as I was but because he was fully covered by OHIP she was actually going to see him for her corn treatment the next day. That surprised me. She added that the MD wasn't as caring as I was, that he only took 2 minutes whereas I took at least 20 minutes (from the time I called her name to the moment she returned to the receptionist's desk after the treatment was actually 35 min) and if he wasn't so rushed maybe his treatments would be almost as good as mine were. It was too bad that her extended health insurance provided 50% coverage because if I was fully covered, then she would have continued with me. But for the time being while the treatment is fully covered by OHIP, she would continue seeing her MD for treatment. "Oh," I said, "well it's good seeing you and if you change your mind, you know where I'm located." So much for chiropodial expertise!

I used chiropodial expertise for a lady during the winter. I regularly did nail care for her, her bunion was sore so I used 5 mm semi-compressed felt oval pad with an aperture and suggested that maybe her new winter boots were the cause of the swelling and that after keeping pressure off the 1st mpj it might improve and if she still had her old boots from the previous year, that maybe she should try them and if the problem persisted, then she should see her MD. So what happened? Months went by, and when she finally came in for her nail care, she brought copies of her blood work. Not only did her MD do a blood test to rule out gout, he also ordered a wbc count (to test for possible infection, it was infected), he also ordered a wbc differential (which showed that the infection was a chronic low grade infection) and he ordered xrays and she had the a copy of the xray report. Her condition had improved NOT with my treatment of the symptom but with a course of oral ab that she took for 20 days to make sure that the bacteria was completely eradicated, because her circulation was slightly compromised. So much for my chiropodial expertise I could (and can) only treat her symptom but not the cause. There was no pus, there wasn't a lot of edema, or heat, just erythema and pain and so I blamed the problem on irritation from her new winter boots. A nurse practioner with no chiropodial expertise would have done similar tests as the MD for the lady and your's truly, with over a decade of chiropodial expertise, couldn't really treat her septic condition. I find chiropody so unrewarding when I can't even order a simple blood test or an xray to help my patients. But nurse practioners can. So please explain your term "chiropodial expertise" and maybe recount some patient treatment situations where your chiropodial acumen and expertise was superior to that of a MD or a nurse practioner.