Lancet article: Sport and exercise medicine in undergraduate training

An article published in The Lancet and penned by Dr Rod Jaques, President-Elect of the Faculty, and Dr Mike Loosemore calls for Sport and Exercise Medicine to be incorporated into core undergraduate medical curriculums.

The article argues that a sound understanding of sports and exercise medicine would help practitioners to manage the workloads of general practice and orthopaedic, accident, and emergency medical services.

The authors reveal that three primary-care trusts initiatives in the UK have shown that a multidisciplinary sports and exercise medicine approach, before hospital referral, improved the conversion rate of orthopaedic outpatient appointments to surgery from about 40% to 70%.

Yet a survey into undergraduate training revealed that only 40% of medical schools taught any sports and exercise medicine, with only one intercalated bachelor’s degree in sports and exercise medicine in existence in the UK.

The full article can be viewed in Volume 379 of The Lancet.