Ryde Hospital podiatry provides a multi-disciplinary team service to manage patients with active lower limb pathologies due to a variety of medical presentations.
The Ryde Hospital podiatry service provides assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and recommendations for the management of lower limb pathology with the goals of:
- Prevention of lower limb complications
- Optimising care of complex lower limb disorders
- Preventing admissions/ re-admission
- Limb salvage
The primary role of a podiatrist within acute hospital setting includes: skin integrity, infection management, pressure injury management and falls prevention inclusive of pressure offloading.
The service provides care in a range of settings, these include acute inpatient settings, outpatient services and a sub-acute rehabilitation setting at the Graythwaite Rehabilitation Centre.
The Ryde Hospital podiatry department works closely with the Royal North Shore Hospital high risk foot service to co-manage patients. All referrals sent to Ryde will be triaged against a pre-set criteria based on the clinical severity for the referral reason rather than the patients residential suburb.
Services provided by the Ryde Podiatry Out-patient Clinic
- Advanced vascular and neurological lower limb assessment
- Assessment and management of low to moderate risk foot and lower leg wounds
- Assessment of osteomyelitis in the foot (with referral onto RNSH HRFS)
- Pressure Injury foot or ankle assessment and management
- Management of in-active ‘cold’ neuropathic fracture, i.e ‘charcot neuro-arthropathy’
- Assessment, prescription, and application of compression devices
- Footwear assessment and prescription of:
- Custom made footwear (including liaison with external funding bodies)
- Medical grade off the shelf footwear
- Fitting of offloading devices (foot orthotics, wound care shoes and CAM walker)