• Sports & exercise medicine

Advancing the field of Sport and Exercise Medicine (SEM) requires organisations and societies to collaborate. Common scientific and educational standards need to be developed to promote attainment of high levels of practical skills within SEM. We feel that the best practice is pan-European and not limited to one nation's view alone. Our personal experience is that the smaller the country, the better the international collaboration, while countries with larger populations, all speaking the same language, are under less pressure to cooperate internationally. This can lead to researchers opting to publish in a national journal written in their native language and losing out on global reach. This slows international knowledge exchange and clinical progress.

ECOSEP—the European College of Sports and Exercise Physicians—was founded with the aim of advancing the competency of sports physicians and, thus, facilitating optimal care for their own and, more broadly, the citizens of Europe. It was to achieve this by providing continuing education, publishing research, collaborating with other sports medicine organisations …