This week, Dr. Gabbe shares an update on the Sports Medicine program and its many components.
What an exciting and historical week. We’re celebrating the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday and the inauguration of our 44th president, Barack Obama, on Tuesday. I hope you’ll have an opportunity to participate in a Martin Luther King Jr. event and take in some of the inauguration coverage. It’s a time of reflecting on historical accomplishments, celebrating new beginnings, and our hope for a better future.
Today I wanted to focus on an important area for the Medical Center – our the OSU Sports Medicine Center. Whether you are an OSU Buckeye or weekend warrior, the OSU Sports Medicine Center provides the highest quality medical and surgical care as well as physical therapy and athletic training to get you back in your game as quickly as possible. Many of us, including me and my family, have personally benefitted from the expertise the Center offers.
Led by Co-Directors Dr. Thomas Best and Dr. Christopher Kaeding the OSU Sports Medicine staff includes physicians, licensed physical therapists, certified athletic trainers, licensed sports psychologists, nutrition consultants and a radiology technicians. The Center has several locations including one in the Martha Morehouse Plaza and one in Dublin. Locations in Gahanna and Powell will open at the end of 2009. Services range from nutritional and psychological counseling and physical therapy to orthopedic surgery, routine sports physicals, and diagnosis and treatment of the full spectrum of sports-related injuries. Orthopaedic surgeons associated with the Sports Medicine Center use the operating rooms at University East for their patients. This has been a major component of East’s success over the years.
OSU Sports Medicine staff serve as the team physicians for the OSU Buckeyes in all 36 varsity sports teams, with over 900 Division I NCAA athletes participating. They also serve as the official sports medicine providers for Columbus Public Schools, BalletMet, the Ohio Premier Girls Soccer Club, the Columbus State Community College.
You might wonder what the OSU Sports Medicine Center and Ballet Met have in common.
Through a partnership with BalletMet, the Ohio State performing arts medical team led by Dr. Robin Hunter works closely with dancers at a specialty clinic in downtown Columbus’ theatre district. The clinic accommodates BalletMet and other professional dance companies, touring Broadway companies and local dance studios.
Because OSU Sports Medicine Center is part of an academic medical center, it also has the three part mission of clinical care, teaching and research. The benefits of this integrated model include advanced clinical care unavailable anywhere else in our city, as well collaborative research opportunities, and an excellent teaching environment to foster the professional development of our future leaders in sports medicine.
The research their conducting is fascinating, and has the potential to help us and our children. A few examples include the Sports Medicine Muscle Injury Lab, the Sports Pulmonology Program, and the Biomechanics and Motion Capture Lab.
The OSU Sports Medicine Center is closely aligned with the OSU Department of Orthopaedics. This month, we welcomed a new Chair of Orthopaedics, Dr. Jason Calhoun from the University of Missouri. He’s looking forward to growing this program. I know he’ll be meeting with many of you in the upcoming months.
Well, stay warm, and have a great week.