Tinker Gray, MA, ELS was a physical education and health teacher and a women’s volleyball, basketball, and track coach when she first met K. Donald Shelbourne, MD, orthopedic surgeon at Shelbourne Knee Center. Gray was working at Warren Central High School in Indianapolis, where her husband was also a teacher and the coach of the football team. Dr. Shelbourne was the team physician for the football and basketball teams. When Gray’s athletes injured their knees, she sent them to Dr. Shelbourne.
Teacher and Coach Becomes a Patient
After five years of teaching, Gray knew that she wanted to do something else. She took a job as a secretary at Methodist Hospital while she was figuring out the next steps in her career.
Gray had played college volleyball at Ball State University, where she earned a BS and MA, both in physical education and health. She continued coaching after leaving her teaching job. When a knee injury from college started bothering here again, she knew whom to go see.
“Dr. Shelbourne examined me and said, ‘You’re going to be okay. Do you want a job?’” says Gray.
Better Treatments through Research
Two years earlier, in 1982, Dr. Shelbourne had started a research program at Methodist Sports Medicine Center. He wanted to track patient outcomes and study factors related to those outcomes to determine how to improve treatment for knee problems. Today, the research program covers more than 13,000 patients, focusing primarily on:
- Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction
- Knee arthroscopy
- Nonoperative treatment of knee osteoarthritis
Dr. Shelbourne needed help developing research databases, analyzing the data, and disseminating the results. Gray took the job, even though she didn’t have any research experience.
“I just dove in. Everything I learned about research and writing I learned on the job,” she says.
A Growing Research Program
As the research program grew, so did Gray’s role, which now includes:
- Directing research projects
- Designing prospective databases to track results of specific patient populations after treatment
- Writing, conducting and supervising research projects
- Analyzing data to produce manuscripts, presentations and outlines
Gray has been an author’s editor and medical writer for more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts and chapters in books. In 2010, Dr. Shelbourne and Gray received the Hughston Award for “Ligament Reconstruction: How the Loss of Normal Knee Motion Compounds other Factors Related to the Development of Osteoarthritis after Surgery” (American Journal of Sports Medicine in 2009). The article reported on long-term follow-up after ACL reconstruction for 502 patients at a mean of 14.1 years postoperatively.
A fellow of the American Medical Writers Association, Gray is also the recipient of the 2004 President’s Award and a board-certified editor in the life sciences from BELS (Board of Editors in Life Sciences).
Until recently, Gray also managed the two research coordinators, Heather Garrison and Diane Davidson, BS, MBA, CCRC. Garrison and Davidson enroll patients in the practice’s research, obtaining and entering their data. Now Adam Norris, a research manager, works with Garrison and Davidson and handles day-to-day administration of the research program.
Maximizing Outcomes by Sharing Research Nuggets
Helping Dr. Shelbourne effectively convey his messages about maximizing outcomes for knee problems and injuries is one of Gray’s key contributions at Shelbourne Knee Center. “With our huge dataset, we can figure out what helps people do well or what causes problems. I help Dr. Shelbourne convey key research nuggets and share our information with the world,” says Gray.
Dr. Shelbourne has inspired Gray—and all of the staff at Shelbourne Knee Center—to always do what’s best for the patients and to continually seek answers to questions about what works best. “I’m really proud to be part of the Shelbourne Knee Center and the machine that’s been put in place to help patients,” says Gray.
For more information about Shelbourne Knee Center’s research program, call 888-FIX-KNEE.