Who are the people involved in caring for people with diabetes with foot problems?

So you mentioned that podiatrists are involved, you mentioned there are a wide number of people involved in the care. Could you talk me through who are the various members of the team that someone affected by a diabetic foot can expect to be present? your feet the foot assessment forms part of your annual diabetic review and that is the foot assessment is completed in primary care by your GP or the practice nurse and what they will do is assess the function of your nerves, check that the circulation to your feet is sufficient so they will feel for the pulses that are present in your feet and they'll check the health and the condition of your nails and skin. If there are any problems that they identify at that stage they will refer on to the podiatry services. Now the podiatry services in the community are split in two. The first is our general community service and they maintain, they will reassess your feet, provide advice and are really there to support you in preventing further complications. The second group of podiatrists in the community are the specialist diabetes podiatrists and they're there if you present with a higher need. For example, if you do have a deformity that may provide the opportunity for a skin break and an infection in the future they would look to providing you that additional specialist service. So their role is to prevent infection and ulceration which is what we are talking about and they will liaise with our third layer of podiatry which is in the hospital setting, liaised with them to ensure that they don't need to provide any further input. So the Community Podiatry Service works really closely with primary care, with your GP and practice nurses and they also work closely with the specialist services in the hospital. Our community podiatry service also consists of specialists who deal with musculoskeletal complications so they would, the MSK or the musculoskeletal as we've just described it, they deal with functional issues so things that for example would cause you pain whilst you're walking, foot pain, knee pain or hip pain. So we work quite closely with that group of podiatrists as well.