Benefits of Membership with SDrA
Sports Doctors Australia was formed to provide an organisation for doctors with an interest in Sports Medicine. It was established to be inclusive of all doctors who had an interest irrespective of the specialty in which they trained.
In essense, SDrA provides an organisational structure so that members can be part of a large number of simlilarly interested people. This allows for networking, education, teaching and a collegiate atmosphere. To this end, what SDrA provides to its members is essentially up to you, the membership. Specific benefits that have been developed or are being developed follow.
Joint Membership with Sports Medicine Australia
One of the advantages that we have with joint membership with SMA, is the provision of all of the resources of the SMA to our committee and to our members. Access to information, resources, conferences and a well repected and politically active organisation gives us a valuable position in th world of sports medicine.
Membership of FIMS
FIMS is a respected world organisation that pulls together information relevent to sports medicine and promotes excellence in sport through research and study. As part of FIMS membership, you will receive regular updates concerning evidence based research into sports and exercise. To have a look at what FIMS is about, follow this link...
Faculty of Specific Interest with RACGP
An exciting development in recent times, is our close relationship with RACGP. We are one of four innaugural groups that were accepted by the college into the newly formed Faculty of Specific Interest (FSI). This provides sports doctors with a relationship with a National organisation that we can have a vey good relationship with for mutual benefit.
From our point of view, this will provide us with a frame work for developing a curriculum and educational pathway for sports medicine amongst GPs. It is envisaged that we will be able to have educational resources for members ranging from sports medicine units, through to a full Masters degree in Sports Medicine. We expect that this will provide minimum requirements for Fellowship in Sports Medicine through the FSI, similar to our current requirement for Fellowship of SDrA.
On the other side of the coin, we will be able to provide the RACGP with resources for teaching and assessing GPs as well as high level advice and support for the college in developing policy and in discussions with Government.
We see this development as a very positive one, but is still in the development phase. Please check the RACGP page for updates...
Further resources
All of out committee are very approachable and can be contacted for information or even to seek clinical information from a colleague.
With respect to clinical discussions, it is feasible to develop a clinical discussion/journal club as an online resource if there is user feedback that this would be a helpful resource. This would be a closed, member only resource.
We are in the early stages of discussions with the University of Queensland in an attempt to provide our members with quality education resources in a modular format. We will be updating the UQ page as developments occur...