Sports medicine: how to design a “tailor-made” option to prevent injuries

The promotion of healthy lifestyle habits, along with the many advantages of sport today form a way of understanding medicine in the 21st century. And this is also the basis for a concept that is becoming more and “in shape”: sports medicine. This medical speciality studies the benefits of physical activity from the prevention point of view, but also the treatment of injuries and diseases. That is to say, sports medicine is the best way, according to Silvia Racionero, the Coordinator at ASSISPORT, for “bringing order and thoroughness to the sport or physical exercise that citizens do every day.” The idea is to look after the health of sportsmen or women in all aspects, such as “the prevention, promotion of sports health and the return to a safe sporting activity,” she adds.

Sports medicine goes beyond the injuries themselves. The regular practicing of physical activity brings with it known health benefits, both physical and mental. However, it is necessary for the experts in sports medicine, through a personalised, sufficient care, “try to ensure that this activity is carried out safely to be able to prevent injuries due to a bad training session, an unsuitable intensity, bad equipment such as footwear, or a sport that is not suitable for the patient, etc,” Silvia Racionero states. Prevention is essential to improve performance and results - whether this is for amateurs or professionals. For this reason, sports doctors treat health and exercise as a single aspect and they back this up with nutrition, with studies before and after the effort or in how to help with the recovery, amongst other factors to determine any improvement and get ahead of any possible injuries.

Healthy practicing of sport

Society is increasingly aware of the importance of physical exercise and of its consequences on health. Today, aspects such as the interest in nutrition, healthy habits, sport, adequate sleep or how to fight stress are concepts that have become incorporated into the population’s daily life. For this reason, it has become normal to see new sports medicine centres all over Spain that provide services for this demand by the population and that care for health under this paradigm of exercise and prevention. Accordingly, Assistència Sanitària have created a new service in Barcelona, ASSISPORT, as an extra element to advise their policy holders to ensure that they develop healthy and safe sporting habits, while improving their health and preventing many of illnesses.

This centre opened its doors less than a year ago, where professional assessment is offered to Assistència Sanitària insurance policy-holders so that they can initiate or continue with a sport in a healthy, safe way. A project that was born with a clear vocation: to optimise the physical capacities of people when practicing sport. The work that they offer is multidisciplinary. The different professionals work in coordination to make a “tailor-made” option for each patient, adapting it to their characteristics, requirements and conditions. At ASSISPORT, the idea is not so much treating injuries, which Assistència Sanitària has had under control for many years now through its medical teams and associated centres, but rather to “prevent their appearance through assessment by experts who help with the practicing of physical exercise that is adapted to the physical conditions, age, state of health…,” the coordinator comments.

Therefore, prevention takes on an essential role. In this new space, of over 1,400 square metres, ASSISPORT provides its services exclusively, and free of charge to Assistència Sanitària insurance policy-holders. To do this, it has prestigious professionals and the collaboration of the medical services of the FC Barcelona, who bring their recommendations regarding the most suitable type of sport for the individual conditions of health, determining whether there are any risks when practicing it, if the intensity is correct, if it is being practiced with the right equipment, amongst others. 

Silvia Racionero

Has been a nurse for 26 years. She started her career at the Hospital de Barcelona in 1996 and in 2021 she became the coordinator for the new project of ASSISPORT. Her career as a nurse has been divided between care activity and management as a supervisor of different medical units.