It doesn’t look like much is going on in this photo, but you need to know the back story. The patient in the total contact cast (TCC) on the right had refused to try one for his refractory diabetic foot ulcer for more than a year — and for very understandable reasons (balance issues, a long out-of-town trip, and an unrelated health crisis). When he finally got one after a year of no improvement in his foot ulcer, he found that instead of being stuck at home watching John Wayne movies, he could get out and walk. Even better, his neuropathy was less painful. He was still singing the praises of his TCC when I walked out of his examination room and into the exam room next door, where I began yet another sales pitch about a how a TCC might help that patient with his pain and get his foot ulcer closed.
As usual when introducing the concept of a TCC, Patient #2 was highly skeptical. A cast sounded awfully inconvenient. But, I had an idea. I went back into the previous exam room where the TCC application had just finished, and the TCC Convert agreed to talk to the Reluctant patient about his TCC experience. The Reluctant patient agreed to talk to the TCC Convert, so I introduced them, and that’s the moment I captured here. We still don’t have another TCC convert, but it was fun to see the peer support.
Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/carolinefifemd/videos
