Injury and Wellness
Introduction
Caroline Finch (1997) defined injury surveillance as:
the ongoing collection of data describing the occurrence of, and factors associated with, injury". She notes that the success of an injury surveillance system "is dependent upon valid and reliable definitions of sports injury, severity and sports participation.Colin Fuller and his colleagues (2005) shared a consensus statement on injury definitions and data collection procedures in studies of football (soccer). Their statement:
aims to establish definitions and methodology, implementation, and reporting standards that should be adopted for studies of injuries in football and to provide the basis for studies of injuries in other team sports.
More recently, Hans-Wilhelm Mueller-Wohlfahrt and his colleagues (2013) have reported on the Munich consensus statement on muscle injuries in sport. The aim of this statement is to:
provide a clear terminology and classification of muscle injuries in order to facilitate effective communication among medical practitioners and development of systematic treatment strategies.Caroline Finch and Jill Cook (2013) have proposed a subsequent injury categorisation (SIC) model. They suggest:
Sports injuries are often recurrent and there is wide recognition that a subsequent injury (of either the same or a different type) can be strongly influenced by a previous injury. Correctly categorising subsequent injuries (multiple, recurrent, exacerbation or new) requires substantial clinical expertise, but there is also considerable value in combining this expertise with more objective statistical criteria.Operationalising an Injury Monitoring System
There are a number of providers of athlete management systems. Four Australian examples are shared here.
A Canberra company, RecordPro, illustrates how these recommendations might be aggregated into an athlete management tool. The Company website notes that their system records sports injuries, illnesses and medications. The system differentiates between training and competition injuries. There is a TrainTracks module in the system that records training events and schedules.
FairPlay offers "a central repository for administrative, performance, training, medical and educational data and resources for elite and developing athletes". The Company website reports"
The Fair Play AMS provides a flexible approach to storing training and performance data, maximising the amount of information that can be recorded. Through our close work with leading sports doctors and physiotherapists, we have developed a detailed and complete solution for managing sports medicine aspects of players careers. The data collected is instantly available both for immediate monitoring, injury management and athlete development, and for long term analysis of trends in performance, training and medical data.
Fusion Sport have a SMATRABSE athlete management system. The Company website notes:
There is no limit to the types of data you can store in SMARTABASE – numbers, text, videos, images, documents and even raw files from all of your favourite technologies like heart rate, GPS and sensors. Store everything from administrative profiles, medical information, fitness tests and training programs through to coaching data, performance analysis and psychological testing and training. Manage health interventions such as diabetes programs, clinical trials or public health interventions.Kinetic have an athlete performance management program, Kinetic-Athlete. The Company website provides details of the system that:
- Identifies athletes at higher risk of injury/illness
- Maintains consistent sustainable performance
- Analyses and shares athlete performance information with staff and players
- Evaluates and fine tunes performance programs
- Analyses, filters, summarises and reports key information to management, players and staff.