By CHARLES HAPPELL
The hoo-ha over Chris Judd’s broken and bloody nose – suffered during Carlton’s defeat to St Kilda on Friday – has turned the spotlight on the role of sports club doctors and their deeply conflicted loyalties. In carrying out their job each week, just what is their No.1 priority - the players’ health or the team’s performance?
One fundamental tenet of the Hippocratic Oath for physicians reads roughly as follows (allowing for the Greek translation): ”I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous.”
On that score alone, the medicos’ overriding concern should clearly be the health and wellbeing of their patients – in this case, the players. Yet the waters are muddied somewhat by the fact these doctors are in the part-time employ of the clubs. That means they are answerable – sometimes – to a higher authority than Hippocrates. In the AFL’s case, they are answerable to the almighty coach.
And if a coach with a very forceful personality, for example, happens to insist to the doctor he wants his injured star player out on the ground – NOW – that leaves the hapless quack in something of a bind. Does he defy the coach, and jeopardise the job he loves so much, or does he go with the flow and acquiesce?
It’s a dilemma that presents itself all the time: the champion does his hamstring three weeks out from an important final. It is an injury that usually takes three weeks to heal. The doc thinks he needs an extra week to ensure a full recovery, thereby missing the big game. The coach has other ideas. He wants his champ back asap, and leaves the medico in no doubt about where he stands. The coach is no philosopher; he thinks the Hippocratic Oath is a Greek profanity. Only the strongest, most principled doctor will hold sway in this situation.
On Friday, Channel Seven’s cameras got up close and personal in showing Carlton’s doctors stuffing all manner of material up their poor captain’s snozz in a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding. But it was no match for the torrent of red. No sooner was Judd sent back on the field then he had to come off again, the blood now coming not just from his nose but out of his mouth.
The medicos again went back to work with their soaked gauze packing, in full view of the TV audience at home, and Judd could be seen flinching as the stuff was pulled in and out of his nose like dental floss. Again, the makeshift plugs were given another try. To little avail. Judd looked like he could barely breathe for all the gunk blocking his airways. To some, it was pretty gruesome viewing and not exactly what they had in mind when they poured themselves a cup of cocoa at half-time.
We are not suggesting for one moment the Carlton medicos are anything but professional in the way they discharge their duties. Judd apparently wanted to go back on the field and was not coerced by anyone in any way.
But consider this: how would those same doctors have treated a bloke with a broken nose who walked in to their medical practice off the street? I’m thinking slightly differently – maybe even writing the guy a sick note for work - to the way they dealt with Judd. Even allowing for the obvious ‘physicality’ of football, there seems to be a major diconnect between the way doctors treat players and the way they treat their everyday patients.
No, the Judd incident was not about the rights and wrongs of the blood rule, or whether Channel Seven should have shown such graphic scenes to its audience at home, it was about ethics in medicine, and upholding the physician’s sacred oath that says: ”Above all, do no harm” .
