And the Oscar goes to…

Joanna Woollard, awarded her Masters in Podiatry with Diabetes last year, was presented with the award by Olympic hurdles silver medallist and former world champion Colin Jackson CBE.

Joanna works as a podiatrist and out-patient lead in the advanced wound care team at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust which, every year, presents what it calls ‘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.  

From left to right: Robin Woolfson, divisional director of transplant and specialist services, Colin Jackson, Joanna, and Dominic Dodd, trust chairman 

“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.”