Article Text
Abstract
All sport events have inherent injury and illness risks for participants. Healthcare services for sport events should be planned and delivered to mitigate these risks which is the ethical responsibility of all sport event organisers. The objective of this paper was to develop consensus-driven guidelines describing the basic standards of services necessary to protect athlete health and safety during large sporting events. By using the Knowledge Translation Scheme Framework, a gap in International Federation healthcare programming for sport events was identified. Event healthcare content areas were determined through a narrative review of the scientific literature. Content experts were systematically identified. Following a literature search, an iterative consensus process was undertaken. The outcome document was written by the knowledge translation expert writing group, with the assistance of a focus group consisting of a cohort of International Federation Medical Chairpersons. Athletes were recruited to review and provide comment. The Healthcare Guidelines for International Federation Events document was developed including content-related to (i) pre-event planning (eg, sport medical risk assessment, public health requirements, environmental considerations), (ii) event safety (eg, venue medical services, emergency action plan, emergency transport, safety and security) and (iii) additional considerations (eg, event health research, spectator medical services). We developed a generic standardised template guide to facilitate the planning and delivery of medical services at international sport events. The organisers of medical services should adapt, evaluate and modify this guide to meet the sport-specific local context.
- elite performance
- health
- injury prevention
- public health
- illness
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Footnotes
Twitter @margo.mountjoy, @profhosny71, @larsengebretsen, @ephysiol
Contributors MM: first author, substantial contributions to conception and design, drafting and revising the manuscript and approval of the final version to be published. RB, LE, JM, LMB, VG, M-EG, BMcC, PP, SR, MS and DZ: members of the expert working group who provided expert-related content, revised the manuscript and approved the final version. HA, SB, ZB, DD, AL, SM and AW: members of the focus group who reviewed and revised the manuscript, and approved the final version. JF: substantial contribution to design and proofing of the final version.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval Research ethics approval was not required as this project is a knowledge translation initiative.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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