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Introduction
Doping in sport, particularly in track and field, is a reality.1 ,2 The WADA condemned a rife doping culture in Russian Athletics implicating athletes, coaches, doctors, managers, federations and even the Russian minister of sport.1 The prevalence of blood doping ranged from 1% to 48% for subpopulation samples (country, endurance, non-endurance) of a blood-testing programme by the international governing body for athletics (IAAF).3 In a study on Doping in Elite Sports Assessed by Randomized-Response Surveys, the prevalence of reported past-year doping was 29% at the 13th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Daegu, South Korea, and 45% at the 12th Quadrennial Pan-Arab Games in Doha, Qatar.2 WADA published a list of 113 coaches, physicians and other support staff, guilty of violating anti-doping rules—athletes are not allowed to associate with any of these individuals.4
How easy is it then for athletes to beat the system? What help do they get from team medical staff?
What about patient confidentiality?
Consider this: you are a team physiotherapist at …
Footnotes
Twitter Follow Hendrik Dijkstra at @DrPaulDijkstra and Nicol van Dyk at @NicolvanDyk
Contributors HPD substantially contributed to conception and design, coordination of authors, drafting and revising the manuscript, and approval of the final version to be published. NvD and YOS contributed to drafting and revising the manuscript and approval of the final version to be published.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.