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Footwear Assessment Tool

Research shows footwear plays a major role in foot pain development, yet clinical assessment remains inconsistent due to limited guidance.

To promote healthier choices through education, health professionals need standardized, clinically relevant tools to evaluate shoes reliably. While individual practitioners have their own approaches, establishing evidence-based assessment protocols can systematize this important but overlooked aspect of care. By integrating footwear analysis into mainstream practice, clinicians can pivot from generic opinions to targeted recommendations optimized for each patient. But this hinges on consistent use of psychometrically sound measures evaluating key shoe properties tied to foot health. The development and adoption of reliable, versatile footwear assessment tools represents a critical step toward elucidating and addressing the footwear-pain connection. Assessing footwear is integral to clinical care, enabling valuable advice for patients with associated foot pathologies. Creating a usable, valid, and reliable tool assists clinicians in evaluating shoes systematically.  

The tool developed here can be utilized across populations to analyse footwear worn to appointments. It facilitates educational clinician-patient discussions about footwear suitability while documenting shoe characteristics. By standardizing evidence-based assessment, this tool provides a consistent structure to transform subjective footwear critiques into objective data-driven recommendations. Rather than relying solely on individual inspection methods, clinicians can incorporate validated measures into comprehensive evaluations, benefiting the quality of care. The tool’s clinical relevance, psychometric properties, and versatility make footwear analysis accessible and meaningful. 

Some of our Key Research Papers

Evaluation and optimisation of a footwear assessment tool for use within a clinical environment

Stephen Ellis, Helen Branthwaite & Nachiappan Chockalingam. 10.1186/s13047-022-00519-6

Helen Branthwaite

Senior Lecturer Clinical Biomechanics

CBRT Staffordshire University