He has spent the last three years preparing for these Games, without really knowing what it would be like to perform under such pressure, with so many people watching.Unlike an Olympic athlete who knows quickly if his or her performance has earned a medal, Dr. Jock Anderson will have to wait a while before he knows just how his preparations for the Polyclinic Imaging Center have paid off. But after three weeks, 871 patients, and 1200 examinations, the director of the imaging center is thrilled with his team's performance thus far.
Most impressive has been the way the group of radiologists, technologists, and other volunteers has come together to make the Polyclinic hum, Anderson told Diagnostic Imaging during a rare coffee break.
"The number one human story is the volunteer system," he said. "We're talking about absolute strangers coming together to use strange machinery in a strange environment, and yet it's worked beautifully."
The 40-plus radiologists, 60-plus technologists, 10 nurses, 10 medical typists, and others have come to Sydney from all over Australia. Like the ticket takers, direction givers, bus drivers, and other Olympic staffers, the Polyclinic workers are not paid for their services. This may be the key to their success, Anderson said.
"The secret is the fact that they're all volunteers. They all really want to be here. Some of them are even coming in on their days off-we can't seem to get rid of them," he said.
The satisfaction of pinpointing the site of an athlete's pain, performing an intervention to relieve it, and then actually watching that athlete go on to pursue his or her Olympic dream is another rewarding aspect.
For example, the Polyclinic team performed a disk intervention to deaden a painful nerve in an athlete who went on to win a gold medal in rowing. Another intervention on a cyclist suffering from leg pain caused by a nerve entrapment allowed her to compete at full strength, just missing out on a medal.
Interventions such as nerve blocks or injections of a joint or tendon with anesthetic or a steroid (which is within Olympic regulations) are performed with the help of CT, a technology that has never before been available at an Olympic Polyclinic. CT, which is also used to diagnose fractures and other bony abnormalities, is an important player in the clinic's imaging technology lineup.
"We don't use it all the time," Anderson said. "But when we do need it, we're very glad we've got it."
As of Sept. 21, the Polyclinic radiologists had performed CT on nearly 100 patients, compared with about 200 MRI, 200 ultrasound, and 350 computed radiography studies. These figures include the two weeks prior to the Games, when the clinic saw about 30 patients per day, as the athletes acclimated themselves to their new environment. Many athletes have been treated for back pain, Anderson said, possibly related to the long distances they had to travel to reach the Games-with very few traveling first class.
Since the Games began, the number of athletes seen per day has risen to about 80. Many show up at the clinic late in the day after their competitions are over, a surprising number even after 10 p.m. Although the Polyclinic staff has managed to handle the late influx, Anderson said he wishes he could have anticipated it when setting up his staff's schedules.
Another thing he might have done is push harder for a radiology information system (RIS) in the Polyclinic, Anderson said. The Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) nixed the idea for security reasons, and the clinic instead employs typists to compile radiologists' reports.
The Polyclinic will remain open throughout the remainder of the Olympic Games, which end on Oct. 1, and also throughout the Paralympic Games, which run through Nov. 2. Since the Paralympics are much smaller in scale, Anderson hopes to have some time then to assess the images collected during the Olympics and begin looking for patterns that may be traced back to mechanisms of injury.
Only then, when he has had a chance to rest and reflect, will he know the degree to which the years of preparation have resulted in Olympic excellence.
