IVO-Congress shows variety of topics on international scale - Education project in Vietnam
Education project in Vietnam
How can you educate orthopedic shoe technicians in Southeast Asia? Prof. Fred Holtkamp concerned himself with this question. He presented a joint project between the Netherlands and Vietnam, where an education was devise, that corresponds to the international standard "Level 2". An extensive curriculum was designed enabling the students within only 18 months to establish an adequate orthopedic shoe technological treatment in their home country. Holtkamp did not question that this education cannot communicate everything with the same intensity as a 3 to 3,5-year education in Europe. Nevertheless he can see a good level in the first existing courses.
Different terms for same feet
Dr. Kris Cuppens of the Belgian Thomas More University College presented a project where foot types of healthy people and of patients with diabetic foot syndrome are measured and analyzed by a number of different experts. The aim was to harmonize the practitioners' common expert knowledge in categorizing or description of feet. This way the researchers found out that the experts typified the same feet with different terms. Typically the practitioners described here the position of the foot arch, the midfoot and the calcaneus. Agreements should arise hereof in connection with the collected measuring values about the definition of foot types, leading to a standardization of descriptions and thus to a better scientific usability of categorizations.
