Regional Healthcare - video transcript
Manjeet: The Gold Coast is quite an attractive place to live, and there's lots to do outside of work. We’re very, very lucky here. There's so much on our doorstep and I think from, you know, from a recruitment point of view, it’s always going to be a positive. It's the lifestyle which you have to appreciate, but equally you appreciate that your patients still want to do that. And who are we to stop them? We can't, you know, we have to give them, they’ve got a life to live as well. So, we then understand that this is how their problems often begin.
Zoe: Well, we’re working with them, aren’t we, not for them, collaborating on what their goals are.
Manjeet: Yeah, that's it, and we, you know, we appreciate that we can never stop them doing stuff because we don't want to stop them. So, we try to enable them. We're trying to help them get to where they want to be and give them that quality of life. And yeah, I think, you know from that perspective it's been, it's been quite good.
Zoe: I’ve noticed the difference up north in Rockhampton in the surrounding towns. Sometimes it would take us longer to see people because we were covering such a vast area with so few podiatrists that when we finally did get a patient into our clinic they were thrilled with getting any treatment at all, and they would quite happily wait another three weeks to be seen again, and sometimes take a little bit more on board then they might do elsewhere to varying degrees, but they certainly listened and would then come back in a few weeks’ time with a new list of questions they would then come up with, but never being impatient about not being seen. Just accept that's what it was and take what they could. Basically, you would love to give them more.
Manjeet: Yeah, I think that was similar in Toowoomba. I thought the patients were really, really appreciative of what they got. They knew if you’re running late, they would never complain, you know, because fair enough they’ve driven a bit of distance to get to you, but they just appreciated it a lot more. What I also found different from Scotland to here was that patients were more happier doing more for themselves than what I was used to. Like, you know, because like you would ask them to do dressing changes in between, there was never really a thought of ‘oh I don't know how to do that’, they just would get on and do it because they know that the distance to travel, we can’t expect to come and have the podiatrist all the time so that self-care part of it, that was very different.
Zoe: We often, because they had come from quite rural places, they often came up with their own treatment plans on the sides, so sometimes it took more education to sort of guide them towards what was more medically advised, but still take into account what they believed was going to help. Because sometimes it was based on something beneficial for them.
Manjeet: Yeah, definitely.
Zoe: One man’s shoes fell apart, and it was going to be a few weeks before he’d get a new pair. So, I don't know where he even got it from, but he would use road tar to put his shoes back together. They must have been so heavy. But they did the job.
Manjeet: Yeah, you talk about road tar. We've had patients that at Christmas time in the heat, you know, they've decided to go barefoot, and they've ended up walking on tarmac and burning their feet. You know, it's crazy some of the stuff that can happen.
Definitely some unique things that we see here that maybe didn't necessarily see in Scotland. Likes of walking, you know, I see a lot of patients, a lot of people in general, walking barefoot. In Glasgow it was too cold, you wouldn’t really walk barefoot anywhere. But here you can go to Woolies, Coles and there’s people walking around barefoot and as a result you do end up with more injuries. In that sense, there's more, we've had patients that have been down the beach and ended up with like, obviously stings and well, bits of debris in their feet and more so that they wouldn't necessarily get anywhere else going on beach with open wounds. I’m trying to think of other specifics.
Zoe: Oh, there’s thongs too. One man really so badly wanted to wear his thongs he glued them to a pair of socks, so he could still call them enclosed.
Manjeet: Oh gosh.
Zoe: I suppose he was problem solving. He did find a pair of shoes that fit that way but created other problems, obviously with not having protection of his feet.
