Unique sport doctor role Cairns Hospital first to add medical specialist in public system

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Cairns North

| Nick Dalton

A CAIRNS doctor has been appointed as a sport and exercise medicine specialist in a first for Queensland Health.

Dr Kira James has started the new role at Cairns Hospital’s orthopaedic department.

The position is the first time a sport and exercise physician has been employed within the public health system in Queensland.

Dr James is a team doctor for the Australian swimming team (The Dolphins), and has worked for the Australian men’s water polo team, and the Young Matilda’s football team. She was also the deputy chief medical officer for the 2022 Australian Winter Paralympic team.

Dr James and her clinic will focus on treating acute musculoskeletal (soft tissue) injuries, such as ankle sprains, shoulder dislocations and stress fractures.

The clinic will also treat patients with chronic musculoskeletal injuries, the type of injuries that don’t require surgery, or surgery yet, such as early osteoarthritis.

She said patients did not need to be athletes to be treated at the clinic.

“Whether you’ve injured yourself mowing the lawn or a longdistance marathon, we want to be able to help you,” she said.

“We love our weekend war- riors as much as our elite sportspeople.

“We want to keep you active, because we want to change our population to a more active population.

“Sports may be the glamorous side of what we do, but the exercise medicine is the bread and butter.”

Dr James said with Cairns in- creasingly regarded as a leading international sports training destination, it was important to have more sports health professionals based in the region.

“I’m going to the Athletic World Championships in Budapest later this year and the team has previously used Cairns as a training base before the Tokyo Olympics,” she said.

“As Queenslanders work towards the Brisbane Olympic Games in 2032, there’s going to be more demand having this service here, particularly for teams because it means they don’t need to fly an extra doctor in as we’ve already got someone on the ground.”

She said the new clinic also had the benefit of helping reduce waiting lists within the hospital’s orthopaedic department.

“A lot of the patients we will be seeing will benefit from specialist opinions, but will not require surgery,” she said.

“They need a diagnosis, and they need allied health input such as physiotherapy.” The aim was to see them as soon as possible and not placed on a waiting list.