There has been an increase patients coming in saying that their foot condition have been treated by beauty parlours and nail parlours. Most of these places are treating ingrown toe nails and causing ingrown toenails by cutting incorrectly, fungal toenails, skin conditions and attempting to treat conditions that should only be treated by qualified podiatrist. The concern is that GPs are referring to places to save money on podiatry fees. There should be increase awareness to public and to the GPs Podiatrist are trained for years to treat diabetic and I’m concerned that there will be increase of infections and amputation. These people that are treating these conditions have no formal qualifications. These are done in secret and they develop customer confidence that they are trained. We are seeing many patients coming with infected toes and callouses when removed with no or minimal sterilisation. We are a profession which is fully regulated and constantly bombarded about infection control and randomly get audited by our own professional bodies, whilst these places are not and no one is stopping them. We need our professional bodies to stop this and investigate this urgently.

So, I’m asking for a petition should be in place. As a profession we need to stand together and stop this.