How do we ensure sport is a safe space for athletes? An interview with Dr. Margo Mountjoy.

March 2, 2022 by

Dr. Margo Mountjoy

Our March 2022 issue has just published, and we are excited to focus on just one of the many important offerings we have in this, the second CJSM issue of 2022.

Margo Mountjoy MD, PhD is an internationally esteemed sports medicine physician and Associate Clinical Professor at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  Her career has encompassed an extraordinary breadth of activity in the field of sport medicine.  In particular she has worked extensively in the area of identifying, treating and preventing athletic harassment and abuse.

She is the lead author of three recent CJSM publications focusing on these important sport safety issues, and in this podcast she talks with CJSM about these studies and the work she leads in the international “SafeSport” initiative.

The issue is topical; unfortunately, one does not need to look very far for stories of athletes who are under duress: perhaps most notably in these Olympics, the story of 15-year-old Kamila Valieva has me thinking about some of the subjects Dr. Mountjoy and I discussed in the podcast. Read more of this post

Filed under CJSM Podcasts, Ethics and probity in SEM, General Interest Tagged with

Pain Management in Athletes: A Conversation with South Africa’s Wayne Derman

November 26, 2018 by

Wayne E. Derman MBChB BSc (Med)(Hon) PhD, of Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Our guest for our newest podcast is Wayne E. Derman MBChB BSc (Med)(Hon) PhD.

Dr. Derman was the Guest Editor of our September 2018 CJSM, which was a thematic issue focusing on pain management in athletes.  He hails from South Africa, where he is Director and Chair of the Institute of Sport and Exercise Medicine, at the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, Stellenbosch University. Dr. Derman does research in Sports Medicine, Rehabilitation Medicine and Cardiology and lectures widely around the world.

If you have not heard him speak, now is your chance. We had an exciting discussion about the challenges of pain management (and the challenges of guest editorship) which we have entitled:

No pain no gain? NO WAY!

Take a listen to this episode, and all of our podcasts, at the CJSM link on iTunes or on the journal’s home page on the web.  Then consider reading Dr. Derman’s lead editorial, or any number of the published studies in the thematic issue, and share your thoughts which him or us on Twitter: @wderman @cjsmonline.

Filed under CJSM Podcasts, Drugs and Doping in Sport, Elite sport, Ethics and probity in SEM, General Interest

FIFA World Cup 2018 — Will There be Concussion Miscues Again?

June 2, 2018 by

FIFA World Cup apperances 1930 – 2018 Picture courtesy of Dufo, from Wikimedia Commons

Ah, the long, lazy days of summer have arrived….or have they?

With a caveat that I must be mindful that fellow colleagues in different parts of the world may be experiencing different workloads right about now, I have been feeling of late both a sense of lassitude and a sense of professional, shall we say, anxiety.

My children’s school year has wrapped up — they certainly are in the mode of being lazy.  The multiple school sports I cover as a pediatric sports medicine physician have largely wrapped their respective seasons too.  There is a bit of a lull in my clinics.

On the other hand, in the larger sporting world, the schedule is most definitely heating up.  I find this to be one of the most interesting times of the year for sport.  In the USA, we are in the midst of the NBA and NHL basketball and hockey finals, and MLB baseball offers multiple games daily.  To our north, the CFL has just started its season.  In Europe, the tennis stars Rafael Nadal, Garbine Muguruza and others are experiencing the joys of Roland Garros.  Golf’s U.S. Open is just around the corner.

And, of course, in less than two weeks, the FIFA World Cup kicks off in Russia. The quadrennial event — alongside the Olympics probably the biggest global sporting event on the planet — opens on June 14 and will continue for a month, until the championship game on July 15.

Like many of my colleagues, I am a fan of sport as well as a physician.  I care about who plays, and find myself cheering on certain teams and certain players [Vamos El Tri!]

Like many of my colleagues as well, however, I am also eyeing this World Cup as a doctor, and I approach the event with concerns over how concussions will be handled in 2018. Read more of this post

Filed under Concussion in Sport, Elite sport, Ethics and probity in SEM, General Interest Tagged with , ,

Open Water Swimming

July 29, 2016 by

IMG_1459

Sunrise over Lac St. Jean, site of FINA 10K and 32K open water swimming events

Amazing to think that the Rio Olympics opening ceremony takes place a mere week from now.

I am, currently, enjoying the good fortune of mixing with Olympians from several countries who will be headed there for the open water swim events.  This weekend I am in Roberval, Canada (3 hours north of Quebec City), at Lac St. Jean — where the FINA/HOSA 10K marathon World Cup and 32K Gran Prix events are taking place.

I am a FINA medical delegate at these events.  I have written about this experience before in a 2013 blog post:  the 32K Gran Prix event coincides with an historic open water swim that has been done for decades on this lake, the Traversee internationale du lac St-Jean.

It is a great pleasure to be involved in an international sporting event like this one.  The local organizing committee does fabulous work.  I am privileged to work with fellow FINA representatives from New Zealand and France. Outside of the work hours, we get to socialize some and partake in the hospitality of the Roberval community.

I also greatly enjoy working for the athletes, watching out for their health and safety.  I genuinely enjoy getting to know them and experience vicariously the thrill of their competition. The joy and challenges of sport are a special dimension of human culture —  I am sure this is what leads many of us to sports medicine.

I think it is those broader, aspirational aspects of sport that lead many of us in the sport medicine community to push back on efforts toIMG_2210 cheat, such as doping.  And it’s no surprise that for an elite, international event like this one FINA has doping surveillance as part of its core mission.  One of the roles I play during my time on site is to supervise the excellent work done by representatives of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, which conducts post-race testing on select individuals many of whom, as I have indicated, will be swimming soon in Rio, where we already have had headline-making doping news before the games have even begun!

We have published frequently on the issue of doping in the pages of CJSM and these blog pages.  We hope you take this chance to click on those links and look at some of that work, in advance of the upcoming Olympics.  And, since it’s Friday, it’s time to follow something new — I would suggest the Facebook page of FINA, which is so well done, and will be hopping with information about this weekend’s Traversee and next month’s Olympics.

Enjoy the Games!  Let them be competitive, safe, and clean.

Filed under Drugs and Doping in Sport, Ethics and probity in SEM, General Interest Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts