Welcome to the 25th Anniversary Edition of Surfing Medicine – the Journal of the SMA.
Hard to believe, but a quarter of a century has passed since Mark Renneker and Kevin Starr took chisel to stone and created the Journal’s very first issue. That “Winter, 1988” issue highlighted a North Shore conference, health care projects in the Fijian village of Nabila, an ongoing study of sputum cytology among Marijuana smokers, and the organizational challenges facing the newly-formed SMA.
Four years later, as second year Emergency Medicine resident at LA County, I heard about the SMA and immediately signed up as “Starving Student” member for the bargain-basement price of $25. In those days, residency was pretty rough. When a resident at County was “capped” back then it didn’t mean they had admitted their quota of patients for the day and could go home, but rather that they had been shot in the head (and they still came to work!). I remember how a new issue of Surfing Medicine was a welcome break to the stress and long hours of residency. I’d always read those issues cover-to-cover with dreams of one day having the time and resources to attend a medical conference at an exotic locale – and go surfing. The fact that other physician/surfers were comingling vocation and avocation gave me hope and inspiration. There is life after residency. Not all physicians are geeks.
I enjoyed the irreverent humor of the Journal, the interesting articles about tropical diseases, surfing injuries, and the remarkably successful public heath projects being carried out in remote villages. Practical stuff they didn’t teach in Med School or residency. Surfing Medicine made me feel like I was part of a really unique group of health care providers with whom I shared a common passion.
Flash forward two decades, and it was with some sadness that I learned Surfing Medicine, like so many other publications would cease exist in a printed format. Call me old school, but I enjoyed sitting on the can and flipping through SM, looked forward to getting it in the mail.
But even for an old codger like me, it is hard to argue against the virtues of the Internet. Consider the fact that the print version was mailed to about 700 mostly ageing gringos, whereas an open access on-line version will be available to the 2.7 billion with Internet access (fortunately they don’t all surf!) With a print version, photos were of low quality, and expensive – on-line they are cheap and high resolution. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the added value of a video link. Forget how to preform a Lachman’s test to examine a knee for instability? Click on the link included in this edition’s excellent article about surfing-related knee injuries. Want to see how to properly remove a Botfly larvae? No problema. Finally, sans paper and mail delivery, the carbon footprint of Surfing Medicine has been reduced to nearly zero.
Hope you all enjoy the new format of the Fall/Winter 2013 Issue of SM. Keep the submissions flowing in from around the world!
With much Aloha
AN