Glasgow 2014
A gold-medal performance
A staff of 30 dental professionals from across the UK came together to provide a gold-medal service for the athletes and officials at this summer’s Commonwealth Games
O
ver ıı glorious days this summer, the eyes of the sporting world turned to Glasgow and the XX Commonwealth Games.
More than 600,000 spectators saw ı40
Commonwealth records smashed as elite athletes from 7ı nations and territories competed across the city and beyond. Team Scotland doubled its medal tally from Delhi, finishing with a record 53 medals and fourth in the medal table behind Canada, Australia and England in top spot. Alongside the
athletes, officials and paid staff, more than ı5,000 volun- teers, nicknamed ‘Clyde-siders’ gave up their time to help make the games one of
the best in living memory. Among the drivers and technical officials, there was a small but dedicated band of dental volun- teers based in the polyclinic in the Athlete’s Village in the city’s east end. Tom Ferris, Scotland’s deputy chief
dental officer, was tasked with putting together the dental team and setting up the one-chair surgery within the polyclinic. He said: “I think it went really well, I don’t think that I could have asked for better. There were teething problems right at the very beginning because we had all these dentists coming in to work in a new surgery that they
had never seen before and work with a dental nurse they had never worked with before. But once they all got used to their surround- ings it ran so smoothly. “I think that the type of people who volunteer,
Jim’s experience was a real knock out
Dundee graduate Jim Oliphant was one of the six dentists posted to the three ‘field of play’ venues during the games. As a former amateur rugby player with Edinburgh Accies, he was given two shifts at the Rugby Sevens competition based at Ibrox.
The tournament was one of the stand- out successes of the games, with more than 170,000 people attending over just two days. Jim was pitchside for the two afternoon sessions and, as he explained, he was kept busy: “It was brilliant, a pitchside view the whole time, but I was actually kept really busy. I had quite a lot to do and see – for example, we had a few people with teeth knocked out.
32 Scottish Dental magazine
“There was one guy, a Kenyan player (right), who got an elbow to the face which resulted in subluxed teeth and fractured anterior maxilla. It was quite a nasty injury but a good opportunity to practice my skills.
“We had a few others, a couple of players to suture – an ear and a chin, things like that. Not strictly dental relevant but it was really good.” And, as well as the dental injuries, Jim and his medical colleagues were also required to learn some new skills, specif- ically dealing with cervical spine injuries. “We spent a fair bit of time rehearsing how to deal with someone with a serious spinal or neck injury and how to stabilise
that – how to get them off the pitch without doing them any harm. “The Scottish rugby doctor, James Robson, was adamant that we practised that ad nauseum so we could do it without any possible problems. It seemed boring at the time but it really made you realise how dedicated these guys are and how important it was.”
actually just make things happen. They don’t sit about and wait for someone to sort it, they want to fix things and get working themselves.” From around 80 volunteer applications,
Tom whittled it down to the ı8 dentists and ı2 nurses who were best qualified and who could commit to a minimum of eight shifts over the games. Of the 30 dental volunteers, 20 were from Scotland, eight from England, one from Wales and one from Ireland. Twelve dentists and ı2 nurses were
based in the polyclinic and the remaining six dentists covered the three ‘field of play’ venues – the National Hockey Centre, the SECC for the boxing, judo and wrestling, and Ibrox for the Rugby Sevens competi- tion. To help Tom with the logistics and the set-up of the dental surgery, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GGC) seconded dental nurse manager Elaine Hutchison for the period of the games.
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