Joanna Woollard wins ‘Clinician of the Year Award’ at the Oscars!

Pardon the pun – but University of Brighton Podiatry students are literally ‘one foot ahead of the rest!’…

It’s not every day that you can say that you have been to the Oscars, picked up your very own award and rubbed shoulders with Olympic hurdles silver medallist and former world champion Colin Jackson CBE!

However Joanna Woollard, University of Brighton 2016 graduate Masters in Podiatry with Diabetes did just that, when she was awarded ‘Clinician of Year Award’ at the recent Annual 2017 Royal Free Foundation Trust event.

The Trust gives its own ‘Oscars’ to recognise “individuals, teams or services that have made an exceptional contribution to the trust and an outstanding difference to the care and wellbeing of our patients, their carers or our staff”.

Joanna, who has returned to the university to give guest lectures, said: “I started thinking about podiatry as a possible career after it was recommended to me by a tutor at college. I was looking at ways of getting into healthcare and he said that it was an interesting, growing specialty that needed more people to take it up.

“He was right. Since finishing my undergraduate degree I’ve progressed fairly quickly in my career and there is a lot of funding for education and development, which has allowed me to do a Masters in podiatry.

“In podiatry you have to build experience in the community before you get a job in a hospital, so after leaving university I worked as a community podiatrist in Greenwich before joining the Royal Free as a vascular podiatrist in 2012.

“It’s a great team to be part of. Among the wound care, vascular and infectious diseases teams everyone is an equal partner. Every therapist, nurse, medic works really well together, so it’s a nice environment. That’s not something you get everywhere.”

Joanna said of her Masters course: “I loved it. I made some really good friends there and it was such a great course. I always recommend it to my students – it was a very good, sensible, clinical-focussed Msc.”

If you are interested in studying a health course where you can really make an impact to other people’s lives and open up numerous and interesting career opportunities, then study Podiatry today.  For further information and to ‘take that first step’, visit here.