Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
The Swiss Sports Physiotherapy Association (SSPA) will hopefully (yes, unfortunately, due to the ongoing pandemic, we’re obliged to write again in this way) hold its 20th annual conference on 4 November 2022 in Bern, capital of Switzerland and home of this event since 2005 (figure 1: BJSM cover for this issue: caption: ‘Best Practice’ conference, Bern, 4 November 2022).
The goal of SSPA has always been to organise a high-quality scientific congress featuring international high-profile speakers. We invite you to relive all our conferences (since 2013) on our own YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMYW4Yv3IXeANv-uD3R0FYA), a free educational resource for the sports physical therapy and medicine community.
SSPA 20 years
The SSPA, founded in 2002 as a non-profit organisation, is a recognised subgroup of the Swiss Association of Physiotherapy and a member organisation of the International Federation of Sports Physical Therapy (IFSPT) since 2004. A BJSM member society since 2011 (the first sport physical therapy group to join BJSM), the SSPA, currently includes about 550 qualified sport physiotherapists involved at the national and international level. To further improve athlete care, the SSPA introduced national CPD guidelines (IFSPT approved) for their members in 2019, with three accreditation levels (and where the highest level allows to apply for ‘Registered International Sports Physical Therapist’) based on the 11 IFSPT competencies.1
The highlight of these last several years was certainly the organisation (in cooperation with IFSPT and BJSM) of the first World Congress of Sports Physical therapy in Bern (2015), which also led to the BJSM consensus paper on Return to Sport.2 In 2018, following a joint conference with the Swiss Sport and Exercise Medicine Society, the SSPA (in cooperation with BJSM and the La Trobe Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre) organised the first International Hip-related Pain Research Network meeting, which resulted in four BJSM consensus recommendations publications on the management of young to middle-aged adults with hip-related pain.3
#sportfisio2022
After a stellar ‘Women and Sports’ 2021, with an all-women panel, this year we will showcase a ‘Best Practice’ edition, to celebrate sports physical therapy! The 2022 conference will feature some of the most respected clinicians and researchers in sports physical therapy worldwide: Andrea Mosler (Australia), Phil Glasgow (UK), Lynn Snyder-Mackler (USA), Fiona Wilson (UK), Eamon Delahunt (UK) and Kevin Wilk (USA) will be our stars in the conference line up! Participants will have plenty of time to not only follow presentations on various topics but to also engage in discussions with peers and speakers.
In this 12th Swiss sportfisio issue
This 12th Swiss Sports PT annual issue of BJSM includes contributions covering some of the most relevant areas in our clinical sports PT practice, from interventions on the field to returning athletes to play. The editorial by Professor Mendes (see page 481) reminds us how continuous education on cardiopulmonary resuscitation for sudden cardiac arrest is key for all actors involved in sports! The important role of targeted physical training in youth (see page 479) and in managing blood pressure (see page 506) is discussed in two contributions. Sports injury prevention is tackled in a brilliant editorial by authors of the renowned Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre (see page 482): their proposed model may support the implementation of exercise-based programmes in the ‘real-life’ world of sports. In an original research article by Ruffault et al (see page 499), a better understanding of athletes’ beliefs and intentions around injury prevention may improve their adoption of injury risk reduction programmes. Other ‘classical’ areas of sports medicine and physical therapy are covered by four important contributions: groin problems in football (see page 484), vertical jump after ACL reconstruction (see page 490), patellofemoral joint reaction forces (see page 481) and return to play after Achilles tendon repair (see page 515).
Last but not least, we would like to highlight the contributions of two SSPA friends. Michela Figini, one of the Swiss alpine skiing all-time greats, reflects on life after her sporting career in her ‘Patient voices’ article (see page 531), while in the ‘Service Spotlight’ ‘our’ SSPA member Véronique Lugrin (see page 533) describes how to make inclusivity and ‘safe space’ integral parts of a multidisciplinary clinic!
Keep in touch!
As always, keep track of the SSPA (@SportfisioSwiss) and BJSM (@BJSM_BMJ) via your favourite social media channel(s) and keep your member society abreast of what you want in your clinical sports medicine and physiotherapy career. That’s how you find out about terrific value for sports clinicians such as the newly launched ‘e-editions’ of BJSM (https://bjsm.bmj.com/pages/bjsm-e-editions/). They add curated content to the regular 20 issues and 4 IOC-supported injury prevention and health protection issues.
Enjoy this Swiss issue of BJSM, keep safe and we really hope to catch you in person in Bern on 4 November 2022!
Ethics statements
Patient consent for publication
Ethics approval
Not applicable.
Footnotes
Contributors All authors contributed in writing and proofreading of the manuscript.
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.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.