My name is Ektaa, and I’m a new podiatry graduate.  Mental health is a topic near and dear to my heart. This is why I believe discussing mental health in the practitioner arena is vital. Now as a quick disclaimer, I’m not a mental health specialist, I’m merely having a chat with some pretty amazing people about a topic I love! However, we have an expert psychologist on the panel, Dr Khurram Saadiq, to help us fact-check our podcast journey. On the team, we also have Dave James, Dr Cam Wareham, and Jill Woods, with hopefully, more to come, who are kind enough to share their wisdom and anecdotes with us all!

In our last episode with Dr Cam Wareham, we spoke about litigation and what the aftermath of litigation looks like in practitioners. Practising defensively to flat-out refusing to see a complex case. If you’d like to go have a little listen to that before we continue today, go on ahead and check that out, we’ll be right here when you get back.

In today's episode, we’re going to be to Karen Reed. Karen is a podiatrist who is now an Academic tutor at the University of Plymouth as a part of the podiatry degree apprenticeship program. Karen is also an evaluator of the STEP-UP program, which Promotes the Podiatry Profession as a career opportunity by linking with the Girl Guides.

So with lots of love, let’s get into it!

Thank you, Karen, for being part of this podcast journey, and thank you to everyone who tuned in to today's episode. Today we learned about:

• The essentials of having a mental health rotation for medical students
• We also learned about some of the valuable lessons learned from a Mental Health Unit

We must look after our practitioners' well-being since they tirelessly look after us.  Practitioner suicide rates are still high, with women practitioners at higher risk. Let’s do all we can to show support.

If you’d like to be a part of this movement, please follow the links in the description, where you can stay up to date about wellness checks, podcast updates, and the latest facts and information about mental health. Until next time, take care and goodnight! X

Ektaa Vadgama