the transplant sport athlete: an unexplored sporting culture · transplant games • 1st world...
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The transplant sport athlete: an unexplored sporting culture
Louise Anderson, Sheila Leddington Wright, Annette Roebuck, Mike Price
My involvement
• 2015 – World Transplant Games as 2nd year undergraduate
• 2016 - Undergraduate dissertation: Athletic perceptions on the impact of student Sport Therapists at the World Transplant Games.
• 2016/17/18/19 – Medical team member British Transplant Games & satellite events
• 2017/19 – World Transplant Games: Sport Therapist & researcher
• 2018 – European transplant and dialysis games: Sports therapist
Transplant Games
• 1st World Transplant Games, Portsmouth in 1978
99 competitors from the UK, France, Germany, Greece and the USA
• 22nd World Transplant Games, Newcastle 2019
2,237 athletes from 60 countries took part in 15 sports
• Transplant Games promote active recovery for transplant recipients and increases the awareness of the benefits of organ donation
• The coming together of transplantees forms a culture to which they belong
Culture
• Culture is something people think, a set of beliefs or values that people in a particular group share.
• Culture is a way of dividing people up into groups according to a particular feature which helps us to understand something about them and how they are different or similar to other people (Scollon, Scollon and Jones 2011).
• What is the culture of this group of people?
Methodology
• Ethnographic approach
• 3 stage approach
• (1) Publicly available documents analysed. Documents from British Transplant Games website(n=10), newspapers (n=7), magazines (n=1), books (n=1) & media (n=1)
• (2) Semi-structured interviews with volleyball players (n=9)
• (3) Semi-structured interviews with cyclists (n=4), swimmers (n=3) and members of the management team (n=3)
• Team sports and individual sports make up the transplant games family culture
• Management take up the head of the family overlooking the individual family units
Insider or outsider: the family structure of the transplant games culture
- You can have a transplant but not be part of the culture
- Sometimes there is a feeling of being alienated
- Unpredictability of the family
- Power relationships within the family
You can have a transplant but not be part of the culture
I’m very excited to see my sister as well, I was trying to persuade my dad to come… because he’s also a tennis player and transplantee, he could have played for Country R (Participant 8)
I talk about it with my brother sometimes who's had a transplant and my sister who's also had a transplant… my brother is actually a better cyclist than I am but he can’t focus on anything long term… he would probably win gold at all the games (Participant 20)
Sometimes there is a feeling of being alienated
I've always gone to the swimming or to the
athletics to support other people and you find
that they'll come and support you, but if you
don't do that you are alienating yourself
(Participant 19)
You can't really share that [feelings]
anywhere else because no one else really
understands it, my wife doesn't understand it
and she was at an advantage (Participant 14)
Unpredictability of the family
I missed out on a couple because I stopped going from when I turned 18 I think 2 years to the British games and then sort of found my love in sport again and started it up (Participant 5)
The team manager can't come anymore because he's liver disease has Returned and is just waiting for that too be bad enough to put him back on the list and hoping he'll get a liver transplant (Participant 14)
Power relationships within the family
World
Transplant
Games
Federation
Local
Organising
Committee Management
Doctors /
Physiotherapy
Coaches Captains
Athletes
Experienced
In-
experienced
Spectators
Public
Hospitals
We’re one big family: the family values of transplant sport culture
- Sense of belonging
- Generational role models
- Unspeakable factors
- Pressure to perform
Sense of belonging
Time stands still since you last met which is great (Participant 6)
The amazing GB transplant cyclist, has offered to lend me a bike, so I will be cycling and running. That is what is so wonderful about the transplant community, we al look out for each other. (Document 4)
Generational role models
I want to be one of the old guys that’s 70
turning up and racing and everyone saying
‘look at them go’, yea its an ambition
(Participant 12)
If you are 70 years old and you still put it out
there on the track, have a medal with
my absolute blessing. I think that there are
those sorts of people are in inspiration to
everyone else because he is still going out
there and putting it in (Participant 9)
Unspeakable factors
I was very conscientious about, not my body, but about the scars on my body I suppose post-transplant, and these young lads were competing to see who had the best scars. (Participant 9)
To be amongst people who, where that is normal and where taking drugs is normal in someone, that's actually quite a nice place to be. (Participant 9)
Pressure to perform
I would say medal this year and win in 2 years
time when it's when it's at home (Participant
3)
I've got a good chance of a medal… it's a lot more competitive I'd say and coming in now although I have come in and won some medals I know I need to work a lot harder if I want to keep that up definitely (Participant 17)
How the family message is communicated
- Private vs public face, we are ‘normal’
- Culture shift
- Preaching to the converted
Private vs public face, we are ‘normal’
I was reassessed and given 10 to 14 days to live! By this time I was in a wheelchair on permanent oxygen! … my wife got a phone call [5 days later] to say a suitable heart had become available (Document 19)
The British cycling team transplant, it’s the best team in the world that nobody wants to be in, in that you don’t really want to be ill you don’t want to go through transplant but actually it’s such a brilliant team to be in once your there (Participant 12)
I think the British transplant games makes the NHS organ donation purpose of the transplant games ticked so I feel a responsibility to that (Participant 6)
I would like to see more recognition of donors and their contribution (Participant 13)
Culture shift
Preaching to the converted
I think more work needs to be done by
transplant sport to try and get the word out
more and engaging with health professionals
to help with that (Participant 16)
It's just like your preaching to the converted,
I've had my transplant and I'm quite happy to
promote transplant as a good thing but I'm
not sure how many people we’re actually
trying to persuade here most people have
either had it or been involved in it or would
like to get involved in some way so I'm what
should I say preaching to the converted
(Participant 20)