The SEMS Journal and the SEMS Education Committee publish an annual “Special Education Issue”. These issues are based on the contents of the individual eight SEMS postgraduate education courses and intend to serve as a reference body of work for all doctors treating athletes.
The topics of each course are defined by the education committee. In Nottwil, we traditionally focus on topics of internal medicine such as sports cardiology, pneumology/allergology and sports, gastrointestinal aspects in sport as well as sports haematology and endocrinology. The periodic physical examination of athletes (PPE, or SPU in Swiss German part), with hands-on workshops with athletes, is a major topic in this course.
The Swiss Paraplegic Centre in Nottwil is the “Magglingen” of wheelchair sports. Over 120 athletes train, and many of them live, here on the Elite Sport Campus. We host a complete track and field facility, training centre for wheelchair athletics, facilities for wheelchair rugby, wheelchair basketball and power chair hockey (e-hockey), including tennis- and badminton courts, table tennis, indoor swimming pool, kayaking, rowing and also scuba diving in the lake of Sempach on our doorstep. So, it is a given that our SEMS course is THE opportunity for upcoming sports doctors to experience the realities of elite sports with a disability, crowned with a sports self-experience in handbike racing and a wheelchair basketball game.
In this issue, we invite you to learn more about the fine difference between a pure clinical view of physiology and pathologies in non-athletic individuals and the specialists adaptions and interpretations into a sports context. This is the foundation of the SEMS courses.
I am also excited to describe the world of “Sports with a disability” to you in this issue. For our team and myself in the Institute of Sports Medicine Nottwil, it is the daily dealing with all aspects our athletes with a disability are confronted with, which challenges our professional stereotypical way of medical thinking and treating. We are, time and again, astounded at the setbacks these athletes must endure and their resilience, and often humor, in taking the next hurdle.
We wish you an interesting read!
