PEOPLE WHO SHAPED SMA PEOPLE WHO SHAPED SMA ROB REID Sport has always been a big part of my upon which my medical knowledge During this time, I was very active life. I learned to fi gure skate at fi ve years is based. with skiing, cycling, playing hockey and of age and I was very sporting at school. generally staying fi t. Being so engaged AFL, cricket, rugby, soccer, hockey, Sports medicine as a discipline did not in sport, a small group of 3 or 4 of us athletics (including pole vault), and exist during my time at university, and it became interested in treating sporting rowing were some of the many sports was not a specialty as it is today. So, injuries diff erently. Treating ankle sprains I competed in. after graduating with my medical degree, with six weeks in plaster did not cut it, I moved to Geelong Hospital where I especially in the military situation. Our During school, I thought of being a was still heavily involved in sport— playing research and growing interest in treating geologist, architect, or later, an engineer. hockey and skiing. injuries fl owed over into how we started I managed to get enough marks in school to treat the families and base personnel. to get into medicine at Monash University. During my time in Portland Hospital, Being President of the Canadian Ski (400 km south-west of Geelong), I would Patrol while I was there, I oversaw much Prior to starting my medical degree in play hockey in Melbourne one weekend, of the fi rst-aid and on-snow ski training 1973, I became a surf lifesaver. This and in Portland the weekend I was for the patrollers. I also had the pleasure experience coloured my whole medical rostered on call. When I was in of working with the German mountain career. I believe that the fi rst minute or Emergency I was always the one called patrol( egacht Schwarzwald). fi rst hour of management/treatment is on to perform cardiac compressions the most important. This goes for because I always got a pulse! Again, It was during this time, that I decided fi rst-aid, being a fi rst responder, as well I put this down to the invaluable I wanted to do a postgraduate course as all other areas of sports medicine experience gained during my surf in sports medicine. The only course that (sports trainer, physiotherapist or doctor). lifesaving/fi rst-aid training. I found was suitable, without being an I continued to be involved in lifesaving orthopaedics course, was in England. throughout my medical degree, during Following my time at Geelong Hospital, I missed the cut-off date by one year, so my intern and junior resident years at I left to go overseas, still not quite sure I had to wait an extra year before I could Geelong Hospital. This included a year about what I wanted to do. I spent a year start the course (September 1985). on the Surf Lifesaving Australia Victorian in Switzerland as a ski instructor/ Medical Council. carpenter/painter/tour guide/car The diploma was a nine-month course. mechanic/plumber/locksmith/electrician. I absolutely submerged myself in the My father was also a considerable experience and loved every minute of it. infl uence in my decision to pursue After leaving Switzerland, I was fortunate Half of the course was physiology, medicine. As a surgeon, his anatomy was enough to get a job with the Canadian anatomy, biomechanics and biochemistry, extremely profi cient. I remember learning Armed Forces based in West Germany. and the other half was clinical work and that anatomy was extremely important This was a young, fi t, sporting community, orthopaedic surgery. I relearned in everything that we do in medicine, but and I was employed to look after the physiology of the human body at rest, at university, I found that physiology and base personnel and the families of but also that physiology during exercise biochemistry were just as important. the military personnel. is totally diff erent! This was physiology These have always been the three legs all over again; I was learning about a completely diff erent animal! 48 VOLUME 36 • JUNE ISSUE 2018