Sports Physician

Professional Profile Dr (Alan) Stuart Watson

Stuart is the medical director, practice principal and lease holder for the sports medicine practice and has worked at Narrabeen since the establishment of this centre in the mid 1980s.
Stuart’s main clinical interests involve knee injuries, overuse injuries of the lower limb, surfing related injuries, acute sporting trauma, clinical biomechanics and pathomechanics of sports techniques (how particular overuse injuries occur) and arthroscopic surgery of the knee.

He is currently a visiting medical officer at Delmar Private Hospital and chair of the Committee of Review of the Australasian College of Sports Physicians.

In the past Stuart has served as Censor-in-Chief, President, Vice President, Education Officer and Chairman of Post Graduate Training Program for the Australasian College of Sports Physicians and was a foundation member and is currently a fellow of the College.  Stuart was heavily involved in the development of the curriculum for postgraduate training in sports and exercise medicine in Australia in the early development of the College.  In 1993 he was awarded the inaugural Special Award for outstanding service to the college.

Stuart has also served as Education Officer, Vice President and President of the NSW branch of Sports Medicine Australia.  He has been a consulting editor for the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine and was the inaugural Medical Director of the NSW Institute of Sport from 1997 – 2000.

Stuart has had experience working with teams from club to national level in rugby league, volleyball, swimming and canoeing and was Chief Medical Officer for Volleyball Australia and Australian Canoeing.  He has worked as Medical Officer at the 2005 and 2006 World Championship Tour events in Tavarua in Fiji for the Association of Surfing Professionals and has had a long term personal and professional involvement in surfing and an ongoing interest in surfing related injuries.

Stuart has had 30 years experience of travelling with teams as medical officer at a number of world cups and world championships in swimming and volleyball and served as one of the medical officers for the Australian Olympic team in 2000.

Stuart has been heavily involved in education in sports medicine at undergraduate and postgraduate level, working with courses at Sydney University and NSW University , and also presented hundreds of talks to community and professional groups on various aspects of sports medicine.  He has published sports medicine articles in a number of journals over the years and also contributed chapters and sections of text books and learning materials for postgraduate medical programs for the Australasian College of Sports Physicians, The Family Medicine Program of the RACGP, Cumberland College of Health Sciences (now part of Sydney University) and University of NSW.

Stuart is currently actively involved in undergraduate and postgraduate physiotherapy education. As Medical Director of the clinic he has a very strong focus on postgraduate clinical education of sports physicians, physiotherapists and allied sports medicine professionals as well as undergraduate Sports and Exercise Medicine electives for local and overseas medical students.