As associate head team physician for UC Davis Division I Collegiate Athletics and co-head team physician for the USA Gymnastics women's national team, UC Davis Health's Marcia Faustin treats elite athletes in a wide range of sports. Faustin is a family and sports medicine physician in the Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Family and Community Medicine. She recently returned from the Women's Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, where she worked with Simone Biles and the women's gold-medal-winning team. Faustin shares what it's like to care for athletes at the top of their game.
What should sports medicine physicians consider when they're treating elite athletes?
As we do with all patients, we want to know the athlete's short-term and long-term goals. This would include the next competition and training plans. For Olympic-level athletes, we typically discuss their goals in terms of "quads" following the Olympic calendar, because there are four years between each Olympics.
What is it like to work with elite athletes?
Elite-level athletes are great patients and a fun group of patients to care for. It's a bit of a shift in that we typically need to hold them back from training or competition, rather than motivate them to get healthy. If they are recovering from an injury and want to return to a competition in one week but need more time to recover, as physicians we try to keep a big-picture view of their goals to make a collaborative decision on their return to competition. At times, it can be "less is more" advice.
Do you have to know and even love sports to be a good sports medicine doctor?
It's helpful to understand the sport that the athlete is playing. As a prior gymnast, volleyball and Division I track and field athlete, I find it makes it easier to relate to the athletes. Evidence has shown us that when patients are cared for by providers who are similar to them, it improves health outcomes, and it is no different for the athletes we care for at the sports medicine clinic. There are many sports I have not played, but I am excited to learn about them, to improve my care for those athletes.
