Elaine McLaughlin is a well-known podiatrist in Derry who’s just celebrated thirty years in business — a serious achievement. She trained alongside Lee in the early 1990s and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. Her practice now has a team of eight podiatrists, and she asked us to come over and run a refresher course for them and a few other interested colleagues from across Northern Ireland.
The trip ran over a weekend in November. The course focused on musculoskeletal podiatry: a methodical approach to assessing the lower-limb patient, the biomechanics that underpin common presentations, and the practical treatment options that follow from that assessment. Most of the day-two material was hands-on — palpation, joint mobilisation, fascial work, and how to integrate orthotic therapy into a treatment plan rather than treating it as a stand-alone fix.
The clinical conversation in a room of experienced podiatrists is always the most useful part of these trips. Elaine’s team brought real cases and pushed back on points where they wanted more detail, which sharpens our own thinking and brings new ideas back into clinic in Yorkshire.
Teaching the Royal College of Podiatry, Kent branch
Earlier in 2023 we delivered a similar day of teaching to the Kent branch of the Royal College of Podiatry, lecturing on musculoskeletal podiatry under the title we use for our peer teaching, “The Long and Short of…”. The format was much the same as Derry — a methodical approach to assessing the lower-limb patient, the biomechanics behind common presentations, and the practical treatment options that follow.
These sessions are a useful way to share the way we work with the wider profession, and to keep the conversation going with podiatrists who are dealing with the same kinds of patients across the country.
Why this matters back in clinic
The same approach we use when teaching peers sits behind the MSK and sports podiatry, orthoses and gait analysis work we do every day across our four Yorkshire clinics.
Book an appointment or make an enquiry → — Leeds, York, Wetherby and Wharfedale.
Lee Short MSc DPodM and Bob Longworth MSc DPodM are directors and senior podiatrists at Podiatry Clinics (Yorkshire) Ltd.