Background Receiving the right treatment at the right time is vital to avoid sequela or worsening of an injury. Research on use of health care in sports is limited, and reasons for not seeking health care, has to our knowledge, previously not been assessed.

Objective Assess use of healthcare by climbers with chronic injuries using separate analysis on the view on use of healthcare for gender differences and level of performance.

Design Retrospective survey.

Setting Web-based questionnaire.

Patients (or Participants) 385 (289 male, 96 female) active climbers with chronic injuries.

Interventions (or Assessment of Risk Factors) SPSS V.25 for Windows was used to perform descriptive statistics and Pearson’s χ2.

Main Outcome Measurements Gender, use of healthcare (including reasons not to seek healthcare if the patient was not attended by health professionals), level of performance, site of injury, preferred style of climbing.

Results 41.7% of the female respondents sought healthcare versus 27.3% of the male respondents (χ2=0.006, Cramer’s V φ=0.125). The more experienced climbers were less likely to seek healthcare than recreational climbers (χ2=.00 Cramer’s V φ=0.207). 70% self assessed the injury as not serious enough to seek health care. 60% said that they did not think a health professional could help with the injury.

Conclusions Use of healthcare amongst climbers with a chronic injury is limited and injured climbers self-assess the injury before seeking medical aid. Experience is a strong predictor for not seeking healthcare after an injury. Some of those who do not seek healthcare after self-assessing the injury might be underestimating the seriousness of the injury due to lack of confidence in the health professionals’ abilities to help.