Gloria Beim, MD, pushed past gender bias early in her career to become an orthopedic surgeon, found her own practice, and be named Chief Medical Officer for the United States Olympic Committee.
Gloria Beim, MD, an orthopedic surgeon based in Colorado, never thought she'd learn to speak Russian.
Gloria Beim, MD |
But in February 2013 the United States Olympic Committee called, and offered Beim a position. This wasn't the first time she had worked with the USOC. She had been the team physician for cycling and taekwondo in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and a venue medical director in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
This position was different. Beim was being asked to become the Chief Medical Officer for Team USA during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The orthopedic surgeon was beyond enthusiastic about the offer, and determined put forth her best effort. Her first task: start learning Russian and began to prepare for a big challenge.
Early Adversity
Before Beim was running the show in Sochi, she first had to climb the ladder in the field of orthopedics. After suffering several knee injuries at the age of 16, Beim was introduced to orthopedics as a patient. Originally wanting to be a veterinarian, she quickly grew interested in orthopedics, which would give her a chance to treat athletes such as herself.
Making her way through the orthopedic field wasn't easy, though, as Beim's competency was frequently challenged because of her gender.
"Every time I went for an interview it was always the same question 'You know women aren't really strong enough to do orthopedics. Why would you want to do that? Why don't you go into pediatrics?' They didn't understand. My real love, my passion, my fate is telling me orthopedics and that's what I want to do," she says.
Beim was determined to break through the orthopedics "boys club." She hit the gym to build her strength throughout her residency. While some male orthopedic surgeons treated her as an equal, others went out of their way to make things harder for her, asking her tougher questions with much higher frequency than her male counterparts.
No matter what challenge popped up, Beim says she always stayed positive, and had no problem proving herself. While interviewing for one position, Beim heard the old spiel about women not being strong enough for orthopedics. She challenged the male interviewer to an arm wrestling match, stating that if she lost, she would leave and never come back.
Beim defeated him, but she didn't take the job.
Eventually she founded Alpine Orthopaedics, in Gunnison, Crested Butte, and Telluride CO, and began doing work with the USOC.
Olympic Spirit
Preparations for the Olympic Games in Sochi started a year before the event began. Fortunately for Beim, Team USA was able to transport its own medical equipment, sports medicine clinics, and pharmacy to Russia.
Beim's team consisted of 71 medical professionals with a wide variety of backgrounds, including orthopedic surgeons, medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, athletic trainers, massage therapists and sports nutritionists.
"My job was to be in charge of the medical team and make sure everybody had their needs met in order to take care of the athletes in addition to running the clinics and doing patient care in the clinics," she says.
Beim never had to perform any surgery during the games. Injuries treated ranged from ACL tears, shoulder injuries, lacerations, minor fractures sprains, and even some upper respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses.
One challenge was the limitations placed on medications. Narcotics and certain other meds were not allowed into the country, so if an athlete needed to be treated with a substance that Team USA did not have in its possession, the medical team's only options were to go to pharmacies or to the polyclinics in the two larger Olympic villages supplied by the organizing committee.
There were some other challenges, but learning Russian eliminated the major issue—the language barrier. It was essential because all medications stocked in the Olympic Village pharmacies and clinics were labeled in the Cyrillic alphabet.
"All the medicine boxes they would hand you were not written in English so forget about the directions of taking the medicine, or the ingredients, or what the medicine even was. You had no idea if you didn't speak or read Russian so it was really a challenge," said Beim.
Even when engaging with volunteers, Beim found that she spoke more Russian than they did English.
People Skills
Along with her Olympic experience in Athens, London, and Sochi (Beim missed the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics due to pregnancy), Beim had been Chief Medical Officer for the 2005 Summer World University Games in Izmir, Turkey, and was also the CMO for the 2011 Pan-Am Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Throughout all of her travels, Beim has learned how to practice medicine in other countries, and how to work with doctors from all over the world.
No matter which event she covers, Beim makes it a point of order to go out and visit the country and to survey the site of the games. She looks to see which hospitals are closest to the games site, which places the organizational committees recommends, and to get friendly with the people working in those hospitals.
"I want to make sure that I meet the CEO and the CMOs, as well as all the people in charge of medical and I make sure that they know me so that if I do have to bring an athlete to their hospital, we are like old chums, because then you get things done," said Beim.
Wherever she is, she makes sure to meet as many doctors as she can. She always wants to know about international practices, and has even brought back some tools to her own practice. One such tool, the musculoskeletal ultrasound, was something that she was introduced to during her time in Guadalajara, and took to it immediately.
"I've brought a lot of things back to my practice that I would never thought of or read about," Beim says. "It's hard enough to keep up with the American journals let alone journals from all over the world."
Another Olympics?
"For a sports medicine doctor it's the absolute ultimate dream to go to an Olympic games. There's nothing better," says Beim. "There's something very special about Olympic athletes [that's] different from other athletes I've worked with. I mean, I love them all and I love working with them all, but there is something very, very special about the Olympic spirit."
Beim has already volunteered her services to the USOC for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She's even started learning Portuguese just in case.