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Seven tips for developing and maintaining a high performance sports medicine team
  1. Tim J Gabbett1,2,
  2. Simon Kearney3,
  3. Leslie J Bisson4,5,6,
  4. Joe Collins5,6,
  5. Robby Sikka7,8,9,
  6. Nathan Winder10,
  7. Craig Sedgwick10,
  8. Ed Hollis11,
  9. Jeremy M Bettle12
  1. 1 Gabbett Performance Solutions, Brisbane, Australia
  2. 2 University of Southern Queensland, Institute for Resilient Regions, Ipswich, Australia
  3. 3 St. Kilda Football Club, Seaford, Australia
  4. 4 Department of Orthopaedics, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA
  5. 5 Buffalo Sabres National Hockey League Team, Buffalo, New York, USA
  6. 6 Buffalo Bills National Football League Team, Buffalo, New York, USA
  7. 7 Minnesota Vikings National Football League Team, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
  8. 8 Mayo Clinic, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
  9. 9 Tria Orthopaedic Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
  10. 10 Barnsley Football Club, Barnsley, UK
  11. 11 Leicester Tigers Rugby Club, Leicester, UK
  12. 12 Toronto Maple Leafs National Hockey League Team, Toronto, Canada
  1. Correspondence to Dr Tim J Gabbett, Gabbett Performance Solutions, Brisbane 4011, Australia; tim{at}gabbettperformance.com

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What should a highly effective sports medicine team look like?

In 1989, Stephen Covey published his highly acclaimed book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’.1 This book, with sales exceeding 25 million copies, describes how individuals contribute to successful organisations, in part by fostering interdependence among staff. The multidisciplinary2 and interdependent3 nature of high-performance sporting teams have been highlighted in BJSM editorials. Central in these commentaries has been the importance of collective decision-making and shared responsibilities.2 With sports medicine teams growing rapidly, sport has become somewhat of an ‘arms race’, with team owners often convinced that the secret to developing a winning franchise lies in the quality of the backroom staff. When assembling a sports medicine team to support the coaches and athletes, what should owners be looking for? What are the characteristics of a highly effective sports medicine team? Here, we provide a perspective from 12 different high-performance organisations based in four countries.

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Footnotes

  • Contributors TJG wrote the initial draft of the paper. All authors contributed equally to the subsequent drafts of the paper.

  • Funding None declared.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.