"Bring it on!" or, let the Games commence

Under the red hot sun of the Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls, the 2014 Glasgow Games began.

"Bring it on!" is one of the slogans of the the Glasgow Games, and it all has started with a bang and an explosion of red hot weather. My venue is very open air, the Kelvingrove Lawn Bowls, really the most picturesque of venues, set on the banks of the River Kelvin as it flows to the Clyde, with on one side the extraordinary Glasgow University building with its unique (to me) lacey spire and on the other the ornate Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, built in the typical red sandstone that is so much a mark of the City.

But it's been more tropical than typical these first two days, broken by cold rain and wind yesterday afternoon. so the constant stream of hot and bothered spectators to the First Aid tent has stopped. Like my Olympic stint, the medical support is split into two, covering the crowd and the "Field of Play", the spectators and the athletes. I'm looking after the second, and I have say, risking disaster, that so far it's been a cushy number.

The picture above doesn't show the grandstands, flag poles, Games banners and security fencing built around the greens, but it does show the pavilion in the middle, which for the Games houses the electronic nerve centre of this venue, and also me, and my lovely assistant. For the first two days we were most grateful for the wide eaves of this Bothy or Hut, which let us take our ease in shade all day, while the serfs - excuse me! - crowd doctors and first aiders toiled in the sunshine, based on a First Aid tent out of view on the right.

We have had few calls from the teams, all minor, nay, trivial. so have spent our time learning the finer points of Lawn Bowsl from the many expert and volunteer umpires around. I'll not bore you with how a bowl may become a "toucher" and what happens when the jack goes in the ditch that runs around each green to keep its pristine grass from being boggy. I'll just say that bowls is a fascinating game of tactics, skill and strategy, as vicious as any golf match or even croquet game, and exciting to the last bowl, as when the result looks set in one teams favour that bowl can turn it right around.

Games organisation is a unique problem. While a small core of managers have spent years setting it up, they rely on temporary staff, who have been taken on weeks before the Games and volunteers who only start work when the Games start. It is extraordinary and a compliment to them that this enormous business, thousands of employees and millions of spectators, doesn't explode in chaos. In fact it runs very smoothly, but the grit in the gears has no time to be smoothed out and problems do occur.

The training that we volunteers get is inevitably minimal, and much is devoted to generic aspects, being smiley and helping the spectators, which the vast majority of volunteers are there to do. As Field of Play doctor, there to deal with major trauma or illness among the athletes, I had been concerned that my team should be practiced in such events. I had a pocketful of scenarios to run every day, and hoped to run though one every day for the six to eight team members that we had at the Aquatic Centre before the spectators arrived and play started. But it ain't like that.

My 'team' is me and a most competent physiotherapist, but just one at a time! No big team to hone and refine by daily practice; I needed to get the first aiders and crowd doctor on side to do this, and willing as they are, there just isn't time to do scenarios in the programme that the Games have set out to ready the venue every day. Fortunately, that Plan has taken on a lesson learnt from the Olympic Games, to involve the Ambulance Service closely with the vene medical team of volunteers. In the Olympic Park, ambulance crews and paramedics were not initially given security passes to enter venues! This was corrected quite soon after those Games started, but at Glasgow, we have not only an ambulance on standby in the venue, we have two paramedics instantly available.

What's more, although there is kit like spinal boards and drugs in a fridge and in a cupboard in the Medical room, that is two hundred yards away. I now know that if I radio for the paramedics they will be there with everything I could possibly need, but even more important with skill already honed by the real world of falls, road accidents and infarcts that paramedics see every day. With that team to call on, I feel so much more confident!

John