Sports Medicine and Patient

If you are an active person or seeking to maintain or return to an active lifestyle, paying close attention to your body is important when it comes to reaching your physical activity goals.

Dr Lesedinyana Odisene, a highly skilled sports medicine specialist at Moso Clinic, is a physician who specializes in providing comprehensive care to athletes and individuals seeking to regain their active lifestyle. He talks to SunHealth about his passion for sports medicine and helping people. His philosophy is not just that one does not need to be a high-level athlete to receive high-level care but every patient should be treated with an individualized treatment plan and compassionate care.

Thank you so much for making time for us.What motivated you to specialize in Sports Medicine? And also get into the specific qualifications and training do you have in this field?

I have always been interested in sports from a young age participating in all net sports. As a medical student I used to work with the doctor for Nottingham Forest. It became natural that I

should go into sports medicine when I qualified. Because I was sponsored by Debswana for my basic medical training I did Occupational medicine as well.

To become a Specialist Sports Physician, you go through the 5 years of basic medical training. Then you do 1-2 years of foundations years (internship, house jobs). After that I did 3 Years of family medicines training. After this its 4 years of Sports and exercise medicine training. I have an MSc in sports and exercise injury management. I also have a membership of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine (MFSEM-UK) and The Fellowship of the Faculty of

Exercise Medicine (FFSEM-Ireland)

Can you explain the difference between occupational medicine and sports medicine? You do both right?

Occupational medicine is about the care of people in the workplace and sports medicine is about the medical care of those who participate in sports and exercise. Though they are different they have a lot of similarities. Fifty percent of occupational presentations are due to various musculoskeletal problems. Both are about keeping clients healthy be it in the workplace or on the playing field.

What types of conditions or injuries do you commonly treat in your practice?

Most of the problems I see are musculoskeletal. It can be joints, backs, muscles, tendons,

ligaments and fluid filled spaces called bursae.

How do you assess and manage work-related injuries or illnesses?

The most important thing to do is to prevent work related injuries or occupational disease. To do that you need to do what’s called a walkthrough survey. To do this you identify the possible hazards in the workplace and you put in place mitigating factors to stop them having adverse effects on the health of working population. If someone has a problem you take a history from them and carry out a methodical and thorough examination to come to a diagnosis. It may be to do necessary investigations. You then examine the workplace to ensure its safe. Once you have a diagnosis the treatment is straight forward. This applies to sports injuries as well.

What preventive measures do you recommend to reduce the risk of occupational injuries or health problems?

Once you have treated sport injuries or work-related injury, you have to progressively increase the loading on the individual. For an example if someone is a marathon running, they can’t go

straight to marathon running. They do shorter distances at first. Also, if they injured one part of their body they can exercises other parts of the body to keep fit.

Can you discuss the importance of ergonomics in the workplace and how it relates to occupational health?

Ergonomics is designing the job to fit the worker so that work is safer and more efficient. As part of the work through survey I alluded to above you would identify ergonomic problems. Having done that you would modify the work place. You can use ergonomic chair and make sure the whole work place suits the employee. Sometime it is as simple as putting the telephone on the none dominant hand or using a docking device for a laptop and using a normal keyboard.

I have come across a lot of patients who speak highly of you and just how you have helped and made their lives bearable.