Monday, September 27, 2010

Another resource I just located

USA Football has four videos on their website about safety precautions including:
  1. Concussion (TBI) awareness
  2. Heat Illness Prevention
  3. Helmet Fitting
  4. Shoulder Pad Fitting
These are a must see for any first time youth football coaches to obtain a better understanding of the risks associated with playing football.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

This is VERY scary for many reasons.

In an article by Richard C. Senelick, M.D., on his blog in the Huffington Post, he tackles the issue of inappropriate comments made by parents, spectators, and coaches of youth sports during games.  He even points to a very disturbing video on Youtube that shows a couple of kids colliding during a practice with very poor tackling technique that results in the one kid crying after the play.  Quite frankly, he was lucky to be moving after the hit.  The most disturbing part of the video is not in the short 8 seconds that is played, but rather the number of comments from viewers who think the video is some how funny or encouraging.  Some parents even go so far as to say that they hope that their kid hits in the same way.  This is vile, disgusting, and reprehensible.  Quite frankly, I feel that this kind of behavior needs to be treated with zero tolerance and have those parents banned from participation.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Facemask Removal Cheat Sheet

Published by the College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Sargent College, this is a cheat sheet for proper facemask removal to access a victim's airway.

TBI cheat sheet for coaches

The National Athletic Trainers' Association just published this article in their NATA News for September 2010.  It is a cheat sheet for your coaches to help identify TBIs when they occur.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Congressional Hearings on TBIs

In this article, Lindy Washburn describes the testimony of a seventeen year old basketball player who appeared before a congressional committee to talk about her long term symptoms related to her repetitive TBIs.  She stated she had as many as seven TBIs from playing basketball over her short career and has since had five more due to other incidents after she quit basketball.  While I realize the severity and the consequences of second impact syndrome and the effect that multiple TBIs can have on a young brain, I have a big problem with congressional hearings on the subject and the potential for federal guidelines as a result.  At one point in the article, the writer makes a very dubious remark about the reliance on athletic trainers and physicians for determining the RTP standards for each athlete.  While the TBI testing software is a very useful tool for helping doctors and ATs to determine how much progress an athlete has made, it is still not the final answer.  There is much to be said about the clinical experience and expertise of physicians and ATs using the tools.  Even the developers of the software suites are quick to point this out.  This article makes it sound as if the software is the only determining factor in the RTP decision.  This seems to be a little irresponsible to overstate the value of the software.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Wow, this could be really big.

Last week, the Columbus Dispatch published a week-long series of articles that looked at the culture of youth sports in America, and specifically, in Ohio.  This series was referenced in by previous post dated August 29th, 2010.  It now appears that in response to this series of articles, that the OHSAA is willing to reach out and provide leadership and oversight to the many recreational programs in Ohio that offer youth sports.  This would be a large undertaking that would require a vast expansion of staff and finances for the OHSAA.  I find this to be very interesting since the article indicates that Governor Strickland would be in favor of looking at this and possibly pushing the state legislature to provide funding for it.  This could be a huge market increase for athletic trainers as well since it only makes sense that we will be called on to assist in the development of programs.  This would not only create a much larger market of jobs for LATs in Ohio, but would also create a big shortage of LATs.  Things could get interesting VERY quickly if this goes well.
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