The lead up to the Australia Open has been busy with lots of practise and treatments and hopefully I will be busy for a while longer - watch out for Naomi Osaka playing her 1st round match Tuesday 16th January.
Only 4 weeks now until I leave on my Churchill Fellowship. I was awarded my Fellowship in Feb 2016, one of the fortunate 100 of 5000 Australian applicants in 2015 – I thank one of my patients for encouraging me to apply for this many years ago.
The Churchill Trust is an Australian Trust established in 1965, the year in which Sir Winston Churchill died. The principal objective of the Trust is to perpetuate and honour the memory of Sir Winston Churchill by the award of Churchill Fellowships.
A Churchill Fellowship is the award of an opportunity through the provision of financial support that enables Australian citizens to travel overseas to undertake research, analysis or investigation of a project or an issue that cannot be readily undertaken in Australia.
The award of a Churchill Fellowship follows a stringent selection process whereby applicants and their research project are closely reviewed by a panel which includes high ranking professionals related to the applicant’s Fellowship topic.
Applicants are selected based upon suitability to represent the Churchill Trust on a project within their area of expertise (or experience) and the Trust's belief that the project will significantly contribute to knowledge that can be applied throughout relevant Australian organisations.
Many inspiring Australians have achieved their career heights with a Churchill Fellowship and the knowledge and worldwide connections this has afforded them.
I was awarded my Fellowship to research conservative management and prevention programs for anterior cruciate ligament injuries.
Australia has the highest rate of ACL injuries in the world with 10,000 annually, the majority of these in recreational athletes. 90 per cent of these undergo early surgical reconstruction at a cost to Medicare of $75 million AU annually. Unfortunately up to 25 per cent of these surgical reconstructions fail and current research has shown little difference in outcomes between surgical and conservative management protocols.
Universal best practice is to undergo several months of a rehabilitation program to assess the necessity of surgical reconstruction.
During my trip I will be visiting ACL experts around the world to investigate treatment algorithms, ACL conservative and post surgical rehabilitation programs and ACL prevention programs.
My Fellowship will take me to the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and The United States.
The researchers and experts I will be visiting include Stephanie Filbay, Ewa Roos, Sita Bierma-Zeinstra, Michael Rathleff and Carsten Molgaard, Joanna Kvist, Clare Arden, Eva Ageberg, Richard Frobell, Bill Noles, Greg Myers, Holly Silvers, Chris Powers and others.
I will be writing regular blog posts so you can follow my travels, in addition to producing a publicly available report for the Churchill Trust on my return.
I look forward to sharing my learnings and new techniques on my return to Australia in May 2018.
In the meantime my knee team at Prahran Sports Medicine Centre and Prahran Market will continue to work to provide excellent clinical services including individual consults and rehabilitation programs, post surgical management, strength and return to sport testing and the GLA:D knee osteoarthritis exercise group.
In the meantime,
Hav de godt (take care)
And
Vi snakkes ved (we’ll talk later ),
Jane Rooney