Swiss Junior Doctors and Undergraduate Perspective on Sport and Exercise Medicine Blog Series
By Anne Cornevin @anne_cornevin, Giuseppe Loggia, Chloé Joray @chloejoray, Laurène Niederhauser and Tej Pandya @PandyaTej
Foreword: Tej Pandya
At the 2017 British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine (BASEM) Conference, we were delighted to see Justin Carrard, a junior doctor working in Switzerland and a member of theSwiss Sports Medicine Society (SGSM/SSMS) committee. We met Justin the year before at the 2016 Undergraduate Sports and Exercise Medicine Society (USEMS) National Conference in Manchester. It was there that we collectively decided to make an effort give Sports and Exercise Medicine (SEM) students the opportunity to attend international conferences. After discussions within USEMS, BASEM, and the SGSM/SSMS, we agreed to create a student exchange to annual SEM conferences with complimentary tickets and accommodation. Below are their accounts:
BASEM/FSEM Conference, October 2018 by Anne Cornevin @anne_cornevin & Giuseppe Loggia
It is a great pleasure to see that connections between British and Swiss medical students are strengthened each year and that with these better connections comes the opportunity for students to have access to international SEM conferences.
In 2018, BASEM invited one student from Zürich and one from Geneva to attend the 5thBASEM/FSEM (British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine / Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine) annual conference. SEM is increasingly attractive and conferences that gather the SEM community, as this one does, are the perfect opportunity for students interested in SEM to gain new knowledge and experience and forge international contacts with other passionate students and professionals.
Those two days in Leeds have been incredibly rewarding for us Swiss students. We saw the broad approach of SEM ranging from psychiatric to musculoskeletal medicine and healthy lifestyle promotion. That evening at the dinner table, we had rich conversations with the British students (and other attendees) about their experience at the conference. We definitely all agreed that it was a fantastic experience. We’re really looking forward to the next meetings.
Figure 1:Giuseppe Loggia at the practical ultrasound workshop.
USEMS Conference, November 2018 at Kings College London by Chloé Joray @chloejoray & Laurène Niederhauser
BASEM/USEMS also invited one student from Bern and one from Lausanne to take part to the UK National Undergraduate Sports & Exercise Medicine Conference 2018 in London. For both of us, it was our first BASEM meeting. We thought: if SEM is well implemented in the UK, it is not the case in Switzerland yet. Thanks to Junior & Students Doctors SGSM/SSMS (junior section of the SGSM/SSMS) and its Students Day, SEM is now a growing discipline among Swiss medical students. Nevertheless, this partnership between Switzerland and the UK is a great opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience in SEM among future doctors. Here’s what we learnt:
“Promoting physical activity in the population will not only improve health but could also save the planet!”
This was one of Dr. Mike Loosemore (@doctorloosemore) main messages as the first speaker for the day. If we all know, that higher levels of physical activity correlates with better mood, decreased incidence of obesity, diabetes, stroke, cancer, osteoporosis and so on, how could physical activity promotion save the planet ? By providing an equitable and safe access to mobility, we could reduce gas pollution generated by cars. Easy, no?
What can we bring back to Switzerland?
On the day, we also had the opportunity to listen to many other speeches on back pain, physical conditioning more. This conference gave us an overview about how wide SEM can really be. Moreover, we got to see how the British SEM scene is organized. It would be interesting to unite young students at our Swiss universities and qualified sport physicians too, to create an exchange about the development of SEM in our country.
This conference was amazing experience and we look forward to pursue this exchange program and have more and more students from Switzerland and United Kingdom visiting and learning from each other.
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Anne Cornevin (@anne_cornevin) is a 5th year medical student at the University of Geneva, a board member of Students & Junior Doctors SGSM and the author of 2 BJSM blogs in the last year.
Giuseppe Loggia is a 4th year med student at the Uni of Zurich, the vice-president of Students & Junior Doctors SGSM, and a board member of the ECOSEP med student committee. He is also a board member of the MSK ultrasound Swiss Society.
Chloé Joray (@chloejoray) is a 5thyear medical student at the University of Bern (Switzerland) and also a member of Students and Junior Doctors SSGSM/SSMS. She practiced atheletics for more than ten years and is now an amateur runner. As a sport lover, she aspires to promote physical activity and health around her through her future medical activity
Laurène Niederehauser is a 6thyear medical student at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and a member of the Réseau Romand de Médecine de l’Exercice et du sport (RRMES). She is interested in sport injuries and athlete rehabilitation as well as in the promotion of physical activity in the community.
Tej Pandya (@PandyaTej) is a medical student at the University of Manchester and a USEMS Committee member. Tej is passionate about sports medicine research, having recently undertaken an internship at the Centre for Sports, Exercise and Osteoarthritis at the University of Oxford and sits on the BJSM editorial board.
If you would like to contribute to the “Swiss Junior Doctors and Undergraduate Perspective on Sport and Exercice Medicine” Blog Series please email justin.carrard@gmail.com for further information.