As pioneers in South African events medicine, the Mediclinic Corporate Events team will train volunteer student doctors at this year’s Cape Town Marathon – an Abbott World Marathon Majors candidate event welcoming over 24 000 participants and offering an ideal introduction to events medicine.
The medical team behind the Cape Town Marathon, led by Dr Darren Green, event medicine specialist and Head of the Corporate Events Department at Mediclinic Southern Africa, have been preparing for the event for almost a year.
The Cape Town Marathon is currently in its final-year bid to become a World Major, and aside from the marathon itself on 19 October, there are also three trail runs of different lengths as well as a 5km and 10km run on 18 October. Over the entire weekend, 40 000 runners are set to take part, which means a large team must be on hand to provide medical and emergency support.
Collaborating to provide expert medical care
“For the medical team, preparing for the World Majors demands strict adherence to an extensive set of criteria,” explains Dr Green. “This involves detailed planning and preparation of all medical service provisions for the event – from specialised staffing models and medical facility infrastructure to pre-hospital emergency services provided by ER24. It also includes scalable management systems with comprehensive contingency plans to adapt to challenges and reduce potential risks.”
All operations are coordinated from the Venue Operations Centre (VOC), where department leads manage resources, respond to emergencies, and oversee the medical response to any incident,” says Tristan Manning, Events, Risk and Disaster Manager at Mediclinic Southern Africa.
ER24 ambulance teams as well as six Mediclinic doctor-nurse teams are positioned along the marathon route. The finish race hospital is an incredible project and resource, Dr Green adds. “It’s a 28-bed hospital with a four-bed ICU geared for everything from dehydration and heat stroke to cardiac events and musculoskeletal soft tissue injuries. Our preparation for surge capacity involves meticulous attention to staffing allocations, floorplan layouts, and the efficient management of treatment process flow during busy times.”
On the public fields, satellite medical stations, and the finish line, a team of around 100 medical and nursing student volunteers from Stellenbosch and UCT’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences are also on duty. “They’ll form what’s known as ‘stretcher bearer parties’, engaging with the public to identify anyone in distress,” Dr Green explains. These teams will transport patients to the nearest medical points on the fields, where doctors and nurses will assess and treat them – or escalate priority cases to the main race hospital for further care.
Promoting events medicine education
Dr Green says his team is helping to to train future doctors and nurses through real, on-field experience. “We’re honoured to be recognised internationally as a credible leader and trusted medical provider in mass participation events presented on this scale. So we want to give medical students hands-on experience in event medicine, creating a bridge between emergency medicine and sports medicine. It’s a unique opportunity to learn more about the emergency action planning of a mass participation event.”
Over the years, this student experience has grown, with Dr Green structuring their education programme and now coordinating with the Emergency Medicine heads at Stellenbosch and UCT.
Students attend event pre-briefings. They’re taught how to respond to incidents and what to look for clinically, both in runners as they come over the finish line and among spectators. They learn good history taking and triage skills, which are important for emergency medicine, as well good decision making and the appropriate escalation of care to the clinic for assessment with a doctor or nurse,” Dr Green says.
On the day, students break into teams of four, with each team given a stretcher to help patients who can't walk or need assistance, says Manning. “Their involvement increases our medical footprint, especially among the masses of people at the event. We set up sterile corridors – restricted areas kept clear of the public so our team can move quickly and safely to the medical centre when needed.”
Students are rotated throughout the day, with some stationed in the race hospital, working with doctors and nurses in a cutting-edge working environment in live time. “We give them the opportunity to see how we deal with conditions like muscle pains and aches, soft tissue injuries, heat stress, chest pain, hypothermia, seizures, electrolyte disturbance, and kidney failure,” Dr Green says. “They see how we work on the ground, and how we assess and examine patients.”
They also witness the Scinapse app in action – a customised tool the Mediclinic teams use to manage and monitor care at large sporting events in real time. The first of its kind, it helps doctors record information quickly, reach a diagnosis faster, and document a treatment plan with just a few clicks, which saves time and keeps care focused at the patient’s bedside.
“Working as part of our team for the day is inspirational and provides a remarkable experience for the students,” says Dr Green.
