Chiropractic Sports Sciences, Macdonald had the opportunity to attend hospital rounds alongside orthopedic surgeons and sports medicine physicians at the University of Calgary. It was through listening to these doctors about the challenges they were facing in meeting the needs of the patient population, that Macdonald decided to be part of the solution. “Even though the (public) system was designed such that Alberta Health mandates that (doctors) should be able to see a knee patient within 72 hours of that person hurting their knee, by their own statistics, they’re meeting that criteria only 1.2 per cent of the time. That was several years ago,” Macdonals ex-plains. Between 50,000 and 100,000 Albertans suffer knee injuries every year, according to Alberta Health Services. Since its in-ception in 2009, Macdonald’s knee clinic has received thou-sands of referrals from nearly 150 physicians across the prov-ince. “Not only do we help the patient by being able to see them quickly, but we are actually helping the family doctors look good in the eyes of their patients,” Macdonald says. The consistent referrals by medical doctors to his chiroprac-tic practice demonstrates the mutual respect and trust Mac-donald has established with other health-care practitioners over the years. When a patient is referred to his chiropractic office by another physician, he ensures the physician – and all health-care providers that have been involved in the care of that patient – are kept in the loop through a letter outlining the patient’s assessment, diagnosis and plan of management. This creates www.canadianchiropractor.ca opportunities for further collaboration among the health-care providers for the benefit of the patient. “Dr. Macdonald straddles the public and private health-care systems and gets them working in concert with each other,” fellow chiropractor Dr. Clark Konczak writes in nominating Macdonald for the Inspire Award. It is not only his successes as a chiropractor that are earning the admiration of his colleagues and his community. His pas-sion for sports has also led Macdonald to pioneer and get in-volved in several initiatives that not only helped athletes reach their full potential but also benefitted the community. He co-founded the Stampede Road Race, a marathon that coincides with the Calgary Stampede and raises funds for charitable organizations. Since its launch in 2009, Stampede Road Race has raised more than $140,000 for local charities, Macdonald says. Close to 3,000 people participate in the event every year. Perhaps one of the most eye-opening experiences he’s had in his career was his participation in the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics in Whistler, B.C. As part of the host medical team, Macdonald had the opportunity to work with some of the world’s greatest Paralympic athletes. “I went downhill skiing one day with a paraplegic sit skier, and there was no way I could keep up with him. He was phe-nomenally good,” Macdonald recalls. “Another fellow was a soldier who had his legs blown off by an improvised explosive device. Only four years later, he was at the Paralympics partic-ipating.” Seeing those athletes overcome their physical limitations and compete in their respective sports was incredibly inspiring, Macdonald says. “We go through our day and we think we’re having a bad day, we think that we’re being constrained by something. And yet, many of our constraints, as evidenced by these athletes, are self-imposed. We make our own limits,” he says. The 2010 Paralympics was also an opportunity for the Cal-gary chiropractor to experience multidisciplinary collaboration at its finest, where everyone is a volunteer and each one views each other as peers. Many of them left the Olympic Village as friends and professional allies, Macdonald says. “It gave me a really good opportunity to see how the collab-orative effort can work when you take money and ego out of the equation… It is everybody volunteering their time and doing it because they love the ability to be involved with high-level athletes,” he says. Macdonald believes in congruence between his personal and professional lives. Results, clarity and collaboration are the pillars on which he has built his practice and his multidiscipli-nary team. “I’m a people person. I really enjoy treating people well. I value quality interactions.” By finding ways to merge his profession with his passion – for sports and community – he is able to enjoy the work he does and the people he interacts with everyday. One of his biggest aspirations is for the chiropractic profes-sion to advance further to the top of the MSK (musculoskel-etal) food chain. “As chiropractors, we really have a unique value proposition in the greater health-care world,” he notes. February 2015 Canadian Chiropractor 27
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