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Take 15,000 people from around the world, house them for several weeks in a small village in the middle of flu season, and chances are any physician will have her work cut out for her.
Add that look in her patients' eyes that says they can't possibly be taken down by an ailment at the most important moment of their lives! and the pressure on the doctor to fix them -- and fix them quickly -- becomes almost unbearable.
All this -- the close quarters, the intensity of high-level competition at an event held over a short period of time and in winter -- were exactly the conditions about to be faced by Dr. Janet Ames of Prince George, B.C., as she set out for the Winter Olympics in Nagano last December (the games themselves ran from Feb. 7 to 21).
More than a year ago, Dr. Ames was made the Canadian Olympic team's chief medical officer for these games. Her task: the selection of physicians who would accompany her on the trip to Japan and to set in motion the regimen of diagnosis and treatment once they got there.
"It takes a huge amount of preparation," she said in an interview just days after her return. "In November we sent over all of the medication and all of the physician and therapy supplies that we thought we'd need, something like 26 cargo trunks full of equipment."
Physicians for international games must balance expected needs against available medical talent, a feat made even more critical by the dangers of winter competition. Winter Olympics have a higher proportion of risky sports than summer Olympics -- alpine skiing, aerials and moguls, and short-track speed skating, to name just a few -- and the types of medical skills required aren't often immediately apparent, Dr. Ames said.
Over 16 days of competition, Dr. Ames and her staff attended to the needs of the 155 athletes who made up the Canadian sports contingent at Nagano. Medical staff included Drs. John McCall, Bernie Lalonde and...