A Visit by Japanese Olympic National Keirin Team Doctors at the Clinic

Keirin, a form of cycle racing, originated from Japanese cycling game, is an official event since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

They have been Japanese Keirin Olympic team physician and psychiatrist for more than 10 years. The purpose of their visit is to explore sports medical treatment in Australia. They firstly visited a sports clinic where we usually refer our patients to, and today they visited and sat in sessions at our clinic.

Thank you for all our patients for their cooperation!

Medical treatment that physios provide is quite different between Australia and Japan. In Australia, since the late 1960’s physiotherapists have been the first contact practitioners, whereas in Japan with the largest number of Registered physical therapists in the world; do not operate as first contact practitioners.

This means they do not have autonomy in the medical hierarchy at this moment.

I am going to be presenting about a physio’s job responsibility and Australian medical system in May this year at Japanese Physiotherapy Association National Conference. At the conference, a physio from the States will also give a presentation on the same topic, so I am looking forward to learning physio’s responsibilityes in other countries.