Interview with Mr David Sweetnam

Mr David Sweetnam is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon specialising in knee problems. He is the joint head of the Knee Department at Schoen Clinic Orthopaedic and Spinal Hospital London. David is also chairman of The Newman Foundation, a large medical charity, and serves in a medical advisory role for the wider INEOS sports portfolio.

Mr David Sweetnam on his work with world-record breakers

The teamwork ethos of INEOS is inspirational. For me, the real pleasures and privileges of being involved with the medical side of their sports portfolio is getting to meet and occasionally work with people like Sir Ben Ainslie, Sir Dave Brailsford, Chris Froome and Eliud Kipchoge – ie people who are outstanding at what they do. You never stop being starry-eyed about these people who are inspirational, but what you realise is the thread which runs through them is their methodical determination and focus to achieve. Of course, in respect of the athletes they have outstanding skills and, in some cases, almost unhuman physiology!

As a medic you don’t really get involved in working with companies but it’s inspiring to see how an organisation like INEOS functions and how they’re really passionate about supporting good causes and sporting endeavour. It’s certainly not done not for their own glory, in truth they don’t really care about being on the front page. An amazing initiative they started was The Daily Mile – a free initiative that sees children run for 15 minutes every day in their primary and nursery schools.

The thread which runs through the organisation is ‘fit in body, fit in mind’. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the CEO, is fanatical about the value of sport in everyone’s life. When he does these things, like the Kipchoge 1:59 marathon, he doesn’t do it because it’s good for the brand but because he wants to make the point that this can be done. So he lends his support to make things happen, with substantial sponsorship.
Dave Brailsford is the champion of “marginal gains” and all of that is built into our new set up at the Schoen Clinic. What we’re doing is taking that idea that small improvements can lead to significant gains and applying it to say a total knee replacement. If you take that from start to finish, ask yourself how can you marginally approve every aspect of the patient experience?

You would reduce infection rate, reduce pain, increase mobility earlier to improve patient outcomes. If you do all of that, those one per cent improvements eventually add up to a better outcome. You’ve got to measure those outcomes – we now measure every single bit of the patient journey objectively with a scoring system so we can be transparent in creating a case to say we’re doing things that everyone else is doing but we’re doing them better. Just as Kipchoge is simply running – it’s all he does – but if you improve everything about the technique and environment, then you beat a world record.

We’re taking that teamwork aspect and applying it to medicine. The teamwork which you used to see in the NHS where there was a team run by a consultant. They were the best success stories and people were inspired by them. People were proud of their association with hospitals such as The Middlesex, Guy’s, Bart’s, St Mary’s etc.

We’re trying to take the best bits of the health service and introduce them to the private sector. Private practice has historically had a stand-alone practitioner outlook and now we’re trying to create winning teams. It’s not about individuals, it’s a collective – brilliant surgeons, nurses, anaesthetists, pain specialists, physios, sports med docs, etc.
Emotional! We got caught up in it because we were together with the team the night before and there was a great sense of expectation and also, what was it going to be like if they didn’t achieve their aim.

It was a human first. You can argue that it wasn’t a record because strict rules about pace makers were not followed but you can’t take away from the fact that a human being ran the marathon in under 2 hours. It was not to say ‘look at me, I did this’ – quite the opposite. It was to inspire a generation of people to say now that it has been broken, it must be broken all the time.
Yes, preparations are going really well. The team is headed by Grant Simmer who has won the Cup four times. Watching the experience of Grant and Ben come together with the mechanical aspects of the boats is incredible. The boats are not even recognisable as boats as we know them. It’s going to be thrilling and again it’s being supported for no other reason than to create a sense of national pride like we all had in 2012. Watch this space!