Member Spotlight
Dr Donald Kuah
What influenced you to become a Sports and Exercise Physician?
A love of all sport and a lack of talent in sport in general. I didn’t know there was the potential for this specialty until I attended a CME workshop on ankle injuries in 1990 run by Dr Jeni Saunders in Hornsby. I then went overseas and worked in Barbados and while there played in a local football team and joined the Barbados Sports Medicine Association.
If you weren’t a doctor, what would you have been?
Something boring in business/commerce area.
What do you enjoy most about what you do?
Helping motivated people back to what they love doing , be that their regular gym, running, specific event/sport. Also having variety through my working week, and regularly engaging and interacting with my smart colleagues/peers. In the course of this I’ve been fortunate to be able to help all sorts of people, ranging from sedentary older people who want to maintain mobility, to teens with potential pro sporting careers ahead of them, and to current and former elite sportspeople.
So this profession has allowed me to be part of many great sporting moments I couldn’t otherwise have dreamt of being part of. I’ve been able to watch elite sport close up, to attend and work at Olympics, Commonwealth Games, NRL Grand Finals, Hockey World Championships etc. All that without any notable sporting talent!
Have there been any learnings or challenges that have stood out for you at this stage in your career?
Obviously Covid19 has been a major challenge for all of society, including specific aspects in sports medicine. One milestone was working with the medical teams and management to help get the NRL get competition restarted in 2020, and do that safely, at a time when no one else in the world had done so. At the other end of my career the most valuable opportunity to learn came as a direct result of the leadership, mentoring and generosity of more senior colleagues and College pioneers. Those are people like the late Ken Crichton, current college senior colleagues such as Peter Fricker (my roomie at my first overseas Olympics) and a long list of supervisors including Jeni Saunders, Grace Bryant and David McGilvray. An ability to learn and adapt has been important to steer me into areas such as ultrasound and orthobiologics and I can thank my current colleagues Ameer Ibrahim and Di Robinson for pushing me down this path.
What advice would you give someone interested in Sports and Exercise medicine?
Keep your options open, keep learning, take up as many varied opportunities early on as you are able, don’t be dogmatic, and don’t burn your bridges.
On a weekend you can be found…
Staying active, seeing loved ones and friends, and seeking good coffee. Watching sport.
‘Active’ for me means a whole host of things. I find variety is essential and I believe, teach and counsel patients that at this age and stage “if you rest you rust”.
I try to live by that advice so I’m still playing bad over 45s football. After I turned 50 I promised myself, and my team, that each season would be my last. Six years later that just means fewer and fewer minutes on the field and more limping afterwards.
As my football deteriorates my Latin dance skills are improving. Skiing isn’t a regular weekend activity but I’m hoping for that to change a little in 2022. There’s a bit of golf occasionally, and all that helps work off the calories from good food and wine!