Clean play education should be a constant element in the development path of athletes, an integral part of their training. This is one of the priorities that emerged from the latest investigation by the UK Anti-Doping Organization. More education for athletes, but also more training for doctors who are called upon to make complex choices, such as exemptions from controls for therapeutic purposes (TUE). In the research conducted by Ukad “on the behaviors and influences of the athlete’s support staff in the practice of a clean sport” published in these days, the athletic trainers, coaches and staff interviewed declare that they need to deepen their knowledge on the subject of anti-doping, also through discussions with other professionals in order to increase their awareness on the subject and ensure greater consistency in the messages disseminated among athletes. Training needs collected by Consulcesi, which has created a course dedicated to this topic entitled ‘Doping. Recognize and counter the phenomenon of amateur sport ‘.
“All health professionals must be able to recognize the abuse of doping substances, know symptoms and risks in order to be able to carry out a correct prevention and greater promotion of healthy sport”, comments the endocrinologist Vincenzo Toscano, professor of the Consulcesi Club course on anti-doping substances, former president of the Association of endocrinologists (Ame), professor of Endocrinology at the Sapienza University of Rome, which in the new ECM course provides notions on the epidemiology of the phenomenon among amateur sportsmen, the latest updates on current regulations and guidelines for treatments.
The course focuses on amateur doping, a hidden and uncontrolled phenomenon. “Unlike competitive sport, what happens in amateur activity remains in an undergrowth that is difficult to identify,” says Toscano. For this reason, doctors and health professionals are called to act as ‘sentinels’ to recognize and counter the problem in time. The course aims to sensitize endocrinologists, diabetologists and andrologists to the problems related to doping, but also to clarify the role of the endocrinologist in the process of requesting the exemption for therapeutic purposes (therapeutic use exemption, Tue) of prohibited but essential substances in athletes. endocrinopaths.
The course, also available to the public in e-book format, also examines the different categories of sportsmen and the frequency of doping cases among them, with the ultimate aim of raising awareness among health professionals on the spread of the phenomenon, in addition to the consequences related medical and legal.