What is Team Care?

Team care involves the medical care of injury and illness in sport and exercise. It requires accurate diagnoses, careful clinical examination, experience and knowledge of sport and exercise specific movement patterns.

Team care involves a multidisciplinary team approach; Sport and Exercise Medicine practitioners work with physiotherapists, sport scientists and other disciplines to deliver care and performance to teams and athletes in a variety of settings; at sports events, in clinics and hospitals. 

Sport and Exercise Medicine doctors working with teams or athletes at all levels adhere to a code of conduct outlined in the FSEM’s Professional Code.

What does this mean for me?

Sport and Exercise Medicine, including the skills and research coming from team care or sport medicine has a large-scale application for public health and the NHS. 

The NHS

Sport and Exercise Medicine within the context of the NHS – In the UK, people have become less physically active resulting in an increase of diseases associated with physical inactivity. Heart disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity, osteoporosis, elderly frailty, dementia, certain types of cancer and low back pain are some of the most recognisable conditions for which there is a link to physical inactivity. 

Physical inactivity has become one of the most important modifiable risk factors in modern life and the SEM Physician sits at the heart of this agenda. Without an increase in Sport and Exercise Medicine consultant led services, the NHS is not meeting one of the key health threats to the UK population.