Podiatrist Northampton

We are a community based Chiropody Clinic Northampton providing foot and lower limb treatments by fully qualified HCPC registered Practitioner.

We are Open During COVID.

What is Podiatry

This is an area of healthcare that focuses on the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of the feet and lower limbs. They treat a wide range of problems from problems with the nails and skin to conditions of tendons, ligaments and bone.

Our Chiropodist in Northampton has a Degree in Podiatric Medicine and Regulated by The Health & Care Professions Council, HCPC.

Conditions Treated

We can offer you basic foot treatment in Northampton for nail cutting including fingernail cutting for the elderly, hard skin removal, callus and corn removal or itchy toes and itchy feet to more advanced treatments like toenail problems that require ingrowing toenail surgery for the removal of infected or ingrown nails.  Laser treatment for fungal nail infections is available and we have an offer at the moment, you only pay for the appointment not the Laser treatment saving you £100's.See the costs of other clinics here.

Ingrowing toenail surgery is performed under local anaesthetic, Toenail removal can be a  permanent solution by our Chiropodist in Northampton.

Laser Verruca treatment, Laser Wart treatment or Laser Fungal Nail treatment. We have had great success with Laser Therapy for verrucas on the feet or warts anywhere on your body but we do offer other verruca treatments. There is acid treatment, electrocautery, dry needling under local anaesthetic or verruca treatment and wart surgery under LA or a combination of the above. Our Podiatrist does not use Cryotherapy for verrucas due to poor results and you will find your GP no longer offers this treatment.

Pain in the heels while walking?

We see many patients with pain in the heels. Plantar Fasciitis, pronounced fash-e-i-tis is the most common. There are many other conditions affecting the heel like heel spurs or plantar calcaneal bursitis (Policemans heel), child pain in the heels (Sever's Disease) and many more.

We can also offer custom made orthotics and steroid injections including  anaesthesia or just advise on physiotherapy. Strapping is also available.

See below for some of the treatments we offer.

Voted Top Clinic in Northampton by 3 Best rated

Chiropody Clinic Northampton

About our Podiatrist

Mr Fox BSc(Hons), DPodM, FAAFAS(USA), MCPod, RSM.

Mr Fox Graduated with a Degree in Podiatry from Leicester University in 1996. He has worked in the NHS, Harrods of Knightsbridge and Private Practice and is Registered with the HCPC.

Mr Fox treats all foot and lower limb problems but specialises in minor surgery for ingrowing toenails and verrucas together with Laser Therapies for warts, verrucas and fungal nails.

History of Chiropody& Podiatry

chiropody as an area of professional practice within health care concerned with the care and treatment of disorders of the feet has had both ancient and modern elements in its development. Whilst some health care professions (radiography and occupational therapy amongst others) are products purely of the twentieth century, chiropody, like dentistry is best understood as an older health-related craft reformed under twentieth-century conditions. The forebears of modern-day chiropodists were the itinerant corn-cutters of past centuries who plied their trade at fairs, markets, and in the streets. Little is known in detail about the history of corn-cutters, but by 1845 Lewis Durlacher, a leading British practitioner, was drawing a distinction between the new professional chiropodist and the humble journeyman cutter.

Durlacher argued that the treatment of foot conditions should become a firmer part of medical practice of his day, and that in particular those with ‘the requisite surgical information’ after examination should be granted a license to distinguish them from untrained corn-cutters. His attempts to create a trained and recognized new class of practitioner did not come to fruition for nearly half a century, when a ‘Pedic Society’ was founded in NY followed in GB in 1912 by the Society of Chiropodists. Foot care at this time was becoming a major business area, which may have stimulated these professional responses. The Scholl remedial footwear firm had developed in the US, successfully responding to market needs, and had opened its first London branch in 1910. British doctors of the day were generally not interested in this area as part of their practice, and only a dedicated few served as mentors, patrons, and examiners for the new Society of Chiropodists. However, by 1923 its journal, The Chiropodist, was presenting the new profession as a collateral branch of medicine in line with Durlacher's earlier ambitions, drawing its scientific principles into a neglected but now crucially important area of health care practice.

The ambitions of the British chiropodists were very much influenced in the 1920s by the general position of dentistry. Dentists were trained, licensed surgical practitioners with a ‘body site’ of their own, separate commercial premises under their own control, and amicable relationships with other medical practitioners. Although previously licensed by the Royal College of Surgeons, they had attained self regulation in 1921 — but attempts by chiropodists to follow this example with a parliamentary bill in 1928 was strongly resisted by organized, professional medical lobbyists. The British Medical Association's position was to oppose any other class of practitioner outside the formal jurisdiction of the medical profession. Chiropody was modestly defined in the bill as ‘the diagnosis and medical, mechanical or surgical treatment of foot ailments such as abnormal nails, bunions, corns, warts and callosities but not the performance of operations for which an anaesthetic is required’, but this was not enough to disarm extensive professional rivalries in the inter-war years.

Nevertheless, after further decades of boundary disputes with medicine, chiropody in Britain finally achieved state registration or licensing in 1960, largely within the terms of the above definition. In the meantime, podiatry had developed within chiropody, as a specialized and more surgically ambitious area of bone surgery. The Canadian province of Ontario. for example, now specifically licenses podiatry as ‘cutting into osseous tissues of the metatarsals and toes of the foot, including osteotomies and joint surgery’ including associated diagnosis. This more advanced type of practice is now internationally common and corresponds with the earlier ambitions of the turn-of-the-century professional modernizers and their vision of a collateral profession. As with other one-time medical auxiliary occupations, chiropody training in recent times has been incorporated into higher education, and now holds a secure place in the broad medical division of labour as one of the preventative and remedial health professions. Students are trained on graduate programmes to offer treatments in the area of biomechanics, sorts medicine and bone surgery under local anaesthesia, in addition to the more traditional concerns with corns, in-growing toenails, veruccas, and local injections. The fully-trained professional group suffers, in its own view, from unfair competition from untrained practitioners, and thus like all professions in such circumstances tries to prohibit their practice, but this claim in Britain at least has not so far been legally successful. Arguably it is more likely that chiropody's next phase of development will lie in even closer links with related medical, surgical, and health professional areas, particularly as health policies try both to contain health care costs and to support increasingly aged populations. Developments in podiatry, however professionally important, may remain a relatively minor part of chiropody's future compared with its wider co-operation with GPs, dieticians, physiotherapists, and others working in primary care services.

Gerry V. Larkin

Bibliography

Larkin, G. V. (1983). Occupational monopoly and modern medicine. Tavistock, London and New York.

Podiatry Clinic in Abington Northampton

Contact & Find Us

Parking is available FREE in our own Car Park behind the clinic. Access is via Palmerston Road next to the clinic, see map.