TOES
10 • Profile
KEEPING PATIENTS ON THEIR
An interest in sports medicine led Chris James to the high-intensity world of ballet. He gives GPST an insight into his busy life as company doctor and GP
A
S Dr Chris James sits in the auditorium of the Royal Albert Hall with his family watching the English National Ballet perform, he is fully aware of what’s really going on behind the dancers’ professional smiles. The Southampton GP knows all about the endurance and physical pain they’ve put themselves through – but it
doesn’t show on their faces. Dr James knows because, since 2002, he has been the English
National Ballet’s company doctor. He started working with the UK’s largest touring ballet company almost by chance in the mid-1990s when the ENB were looking for GPs in areas where they were performing. With a keen interest in sport and a hunger for expanding his skills, Dr James applied and was soon treating the dancers visiting his hometown. Dr James, who qualified in 1985, says: “I guess because I am in a
university practice, and therefore have [treated] lots of fairly young people who get hurt, they wrote to our practice and I said ‘yeah, I’ll do that’.
“So when the company was in Southampton, twice a year for a week,
I would call in. It was so accessible – the theatre was just five minutes away. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and got on really well with them.” When the ENB’s company doctor left a few years later, Dr James
jumped at the chance to take on the role. The 54-year-old says, smiling: “It wasn’t a difficult decision.”
Careful scheduling However, given that the ENB is London-based and Dr James is around two hours away at the University of Southampton, logistics were a concern and this was a huge challenge for the already-busy GP, a full- time partner at the University Health Service.
Dr James, who is also a member of the clinical commissioning group
(CCG) board, says: “I needed to see how I could make it work. I couldn’t take a whole day out just to have a half-day in London, I had to work out how I could fit it all in. “So I start a surgery at 8am and can still make the 11 o’clock train to
London. I am with the Company by 1pm, spend a few hours with them, then get the train back and I am home by 6pm. It’s like a normal working day, only I get two hours to read the paper in between! And sometimes I wander round the building watching people rehearse. It’s great.” He and his family try to catch a performance each season, a particular treat for his daughter who has dabbled in ballet. “The benefits are amazing, especially seeing them perform in grand surroundings like the Royal Albert Hall,” he says. Of all the ballets he has seen, Dr James says his favourite is the
Nutcracker. “We see it every year either in Southampton, or at the London Coliseum where they perform every winter,” he says. “I have seen three or four differently-choreographed versions, and every one of them has been brilliant.”
Sprains and pains As the ENB’s company doctor, Chris carries out primary care treatment, as he would back at his practice in Southampton, and works closely with ENB physiotherapist Jackie Pelly and her team to treat injured dancers. The type of injuries the medical team can be faced with vary from acute sprains, back pains, and stress fractures in the feet and lower leg, right through to sword-fighting injuries. If a dancer sustains soft tissue damage or a broken bone, they can
easily access physiotherapists, MRI scans or orthopaedic surgeons as all ENB dancers are insured (meaning Dr James can refer them for swift
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