<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2uP90O_1GuRqG5b00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2uP90O_1GuRqG5b00" width="2048" height="1152" ></figure><h2>Sole Practitioner</h2>Before her recent conversation with BusinessWest, Kate Clayton-Jones observed a training session going on at the Greenfield headquarters of FootCare by Nurses, a practice she launched 10 years ago.“They’re learning how to touch a human being because, quite honestly, we don’t actually learn this in nursing school,” she said. “We learn how to do shots, we learn how to take blood pressure, and so on. But if we’re doing foot care right, we are touching a human being and trying to make a connection so they can stay attached to their feet.”Attached, in the sense of understanding the connection between foot health and overall health, and all the pitfalls of neglecting one’s feet, from infections to swelling and sores, Clayton-Jones explained.“The world of fall prevention says, ‘let me adjust your slip rug, let me change your lighting, let me put in a handrail.’ But we say, ‘if your feet aren’t working properly, how is it possible that you are going to stay balanced?’”It’s a discipline that encompasses everything from how shoes fit and how socks are supposed to be worn to understanding the nerve sensors in the feet and toes, and how pain in the body can be relieved through footwork.“But who’s going to train us? There aren’t that many of us out there,” she went on. “So my mission is prevention; my passion is caring. Ultimately, underneath all of this was a desire to show nurses that you can learn this skill that is so important for vitality and wellness, especially for elders in your community. Most people want to stay home. But they cannot stay home if they fall, or if they can’t walk.”Starting out with a handful of clients, Clayton-Jones created a practice that not only treats patients — most of them senior citizens — across Massachusetts, but trains other nurses in the foot care discipline.“We have people who come from all over the country to learn with us, which is great. And we want more of them to come,” she said. “We have a massive aging population, and healthcare is not helping them.”Eighty percent of the business, in fact, is going into people’s homes and providing services there. She now boasts about 7,000 clients, seeing about 3,000 regularly — and employs about 50 caregivers, allowing FootCare by Nurses to provide care across Massachusetts.<blockquote>“The world of fall prevention says, ‘let me adjust your slip rug, let me change your lighting, let me put in a handrail.’ But we say, ‘if your feet aren’t working properly, how is it possible that you are going to stay balanced?’”</blockquote>Patient referrals come through 10 aging service access points across the Commonwealth, including LifePath, Access Care Partners, Highland Valley Elder Services, and Elder Services of Berkshire County, while clients can self-refer as well.“We cover the whole state, and we go into people’s homes to provide this service, as the vast majority of our people cannot get out,” she said. “They might have dementia, they might be 100 years old. They can’t reach their toes to clip their toenails, and that ends up growing over and into their feet and pinching and causing calluses that hurt their balance. We can help them with those things.”In addition, she noted, “we also staff in at 46 senior centers; we have a chair there, and people can sign up and come in. We just try to make it happen for people because we want them to have this care.”When people think about foot care, sometimes diabetes comes to mind, and the need for diabetics to monitor their feet is well-documented, Clayton-Jones said.“That’s what gets the lion’s share of concentration and money — and definitely, anybody with diabetes should be having a slightly higher level of assessment than you’d get at a nail salon. But even if you’re a healthy person, you should be saying, ‘hey, you know what? Maybe once a year I just want somebody who actually knows what they’re looking at to look at my feet.’“The PCPs, the medical profession, can do that, but ultimately they miss a lot of stuff because they just don’t have a lot of experience with what people’s feet look like,” she added. “We see a lot of good intention, but not necessarily the right level of experience. Diabetes is just one chronic disease. Heart disease has just as much of an impact on your mobility and your foot health.”<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1UkLPI_1GuRqG5b00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1UkLPI_1GuRqG5b00" width="2048" height="1152" ></figure>From left, Sylvia Maes, Sara Squeri, and Candice Clark participate in a foot care training session.<h2>Change of Direction</h2>Clayton-Jones credits the financial crisis of 2008 with putting her on a much different path — and helping thousands of people walk their own paths much more comfortably.She was working at MassMutual then, but the onset of the Great Recession made it tough to sell financial products, so she switched gears and took a job at Greenfield Community College.“I was working with all these people that were trying to turn their lives around because their savings had gone away. I was 48 years old, and Greenfield gave me a class that I could take for free. So I took anatomy and physiology — I’d always wanted to take that. If I failed it, no big deal; I didn’t pay for it. And I walked into that classroom, and I saw hope, and I saw a future. I saw people whose lives had gone up in smoke, and they’re like, ‘I’m going to go be a doctor.’ ‘I’m going to go be a nurse.’“I wanted to be more like these people who seemed to have purpose and zest,” she went on. “I understand that financial stuff is really important, but ultimately, you can only chase money for so long before you realize there’s more to life. I had already gotten an MBA from UMass in 2005, so I turned around and said, ‘you know what? I’m probably not smart enough to be a doctor. But I think I could be a nurse’ — which, it turns out, was a bunch of hooey because nurses are really intelligent people.”So she continued to take the prerequisites she needed to go to nursing school, and began a healthcare career. “I had no idea how to take care of a human being — and that was humbling. And I made some big mistakes, and I ended up getting myself in trouble, but my heart was in it.”While gaining experience in the field at Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst and the Overlook in Charlton, Clayton-Jones continued her academic career as well, eventually earning bachelor’s and PhD degrees at UMass Amherst. But it was a chance meeting during a wound care preceptorship, with a patient named Bob, that really altered her course.“He was having his toe amputated, and he was not having a very good time, and I was like, ‘this was so preventable, if somebody had actually looked at what was going on with the shoe and his toe.’“Bob really inspired me to think, nursing needs to say, ‘let’s be the quality control people along the way — not to stop people from doing their job, but just to hold us all accountable. What does quality care look like? What does prevention look like?’”From there, Clayton-Jones met a foot care nurse in Shelburne Falls, and she was intrigued by this niche, seeing in it an ideal opportunity to promote preventive care — and maybe keep other Bobs from losing their extremities.“She told me she couldn’t teach me how to do foot care, so I went and took a class, and then I came back. She sent me a patient, and said, ‘oh my God, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll try’ — and I literally just kept showing up.”From there, FootCare by Nurses was born in 2016. When she first started, she put out advertisements, and Western Massachusetts Hospital, a long-term facility in Westfield, called and asked her to provide foot care for the whole building.<blockquote>“We cannot say no to the next person who calls — because, if we say no, maybe that’s the person who’s going to get their foot amputated in a couple of weeks, if we don’t show up and say, ‘you know, there’s something wrong here.’”</blockquote>“Their incidence of wounds went down. Their incidence of falls went down. Their nurses looked forward to our nurses coming in. It was a collaborative effort. And their costs went down exponentially,” she explained.Meanwhile, she was gathering other clients as well.“It’s hard to hold down school and a job and build a business,” she said, “but every time I thought about giving up on any of them, I just felt like it was my journey, and I just needed to keep going. I hired my first employee so I could go see more people. I have driven all over the state, always thinking, ‘how can I say no to the next person who needs this?’”People like Lee Wicks, who now does some marketing for FootCare by Nurses, but first encountered Clayton-Jones as a patient.“My feet had not been cared for during COVID, and I was in pain,” Wicks recalled. “Her caring, thoughtful approach to foot care was different from anything I’d experienced, and I ended up writing an essay for my local paper about the role foot care plays in general health and well-being. She then hired me to help write her website content and printed materials.”And broader education in the community is important to Clayton-Jones; she writes a quarterly column for the LifePath newsletter, has spoken at national and international foot care conferences, and has been advocate as well, such as when she traveled to Rhode Island this past spring to testify and persuade legislators to allow trained nurses to provide foot care to patients in their homes. The bill passed.<h2>Step by Step</h2>Even in her early experiences, “I was just learning about the stories that humans were telling,” Clayton-Jones said. “Like, it doesn’t matter how much money you have — if you are not feeling well, you just don’t feel well, and you need care.“But we’re in a system that is really broken and does not necessarily do well to support the caregivers — because caregiving is exhausting; it’s very draining. But people still need care. So I was learning, in a sense, how to do hospitality well.”That philosophy has driven the dual growth of FootCare by Nurses, both in patients served and nurses trained. As her team got bigger and she didn’t have to do all the driving anymore, what was most gratifying was the ability to reach more people in need.“We cannot say no to the next person who calls — because, if we say no, maybe that’s the person who’s going to get their foot amputated in a couple of weeks, if we don’t show up and say, ‘you know, there’s something wrong here.’“Even during COVID, people would find us and be like, ‘I really need help,’” she recalled. “And we said, ‘OK, we’ll put a mask on, and we’ll go in and take care of you.’”It all comes back to being a nurse, with all the caring nature inherent to that role — only, with a specialized, often overlooked skill.“Because we’re nurses, we can say, ‘you know what? I noticed you’re not feeling so well,’” Clayton-Jones said. “And they’re like, ‘oh, yeah, I’m on a new blood pressure medication.’ And then we can have a conversation about that medication, or what to tell the cardiologist or how to speak to the PCP about a concern. Nurses are patient advocates, so how can I advocate for you? How can I educate you?”Through FootCare by Nurses, Clayton-Jones and her growing team keep asking — and keep finding the answers their clients need. </div></body>

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Before her recent conversation with BusinessWest, Kate Clayton-Jones observed a training session going on at the Greenfield headquarters of FootCare by Nurses, a practice she launched 10 years ago. “They’re learning how to touch a human being because, quite honestly, we don’t actually learn this in nursing school,” she said....

FootCare By Nurses Emphasizes Preventive Wellness

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Before her recent conversation with BusinessWest, Kate Clayton-Jones observed a training session going on at the Greenfield headquarters of FootCare by Nur

FootCare By Nurses Emphasizes Preventive Wellness

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