Concussions are a hot-button issue in sports media, and with the NFL recently admitting that there’s a link between football and severe brain injuries caused by concussions, the talks got louder, garnering reaction from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
“I don’t watch a whole lot of football (but) I think that the medical industry has known for a long time that head injuries have a long-term impact,” says Erica Braunovan, school board trustee for the Somerset/Kitchissippi zone.
The issue of concussions in the NFL is one that has been in the media and popular culture for a long time, but it was really brought to the forefront with the Will Smith movie “Concussion” based on the work of Dr. Bennet Omalu and the autopsy he performed in 2002 on former NFLer Mike Webster who died at age 50.
During the autopsy, Omalu found that Webster suffered from CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which was the first evidence that football could cause permanent brain damage – something NFL rejected until March 15.
Lisgar, along with other schools in the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, implemented a concussion management protocol in February 2015 that is designed to help teachers identify and deal with concussions in school sports as well as concussions experienced outside of school.
For incidents that occur at school – such as collisions during a gym class or a hard-hit during a rugby game – the teacher must fill out a list of potential concussion symptoms and check off the ones that the student is experiencing.
The teacher then asks the student a series of questions – “What part of the day is it?” for example – and records his or her answers.
Part of the recovery process, if the student has a diagnosed concussion, is that he or she needs to rest and be symptom-free for a minimum of 24 hours and have a medical note before returning to school.
Before returning to physical actvity, the student needs to be participating regularly in school – as opposed to when they first return to school where school activity is gradually increased until back to normal.
When going through this process, the student needs to pass a series of physical tests before being allowed to return to gym class or any sport he or she plays. The first is being able to go through an aerobic workout, such as riding a stationary bike without symptoms.
They then move on to individual practice, such as skating or running, before being allowed to be a non-contact participant in practices or gym class.
Once the student is cleared by a doctor or nurse practitioner and he or she has no more concussion symptoms, they can return to being a full participant in practice and can then go back to playing games or gym class.
Parachute Canada, a Toronto-based national organization aimed at injury education and prevention, also has information to help parents, coaches, athletes and teachers deal with concussions.
Parachute Canada provided some of their research and information to the Ontario Physical Education Safety Association when it was going through the process of recommending the concussion protocol to the Ontario Ministry of Education in 2014, directing all public school boards to have a concussion management protocol.
Athletics in schools present situations where concussions are possible. Lisgar offers sports that have links to concussions in the past, like soccer, hockey and rugby, but one noticeable omission is that they don’t offer football – unlike other high schools in the board. These lead to situations where teachers need to understand how to manage a concussion.
“They’re often coaching teams from school, so they also need to know how to recognize and deal with a concussion,” Fuselli says.
Braunovan references a tragic moment in explaining why the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board felt that bringing in a concussion protocol was urgent
“There was a death of a student at one of the high schools in the district caused by secondary impact syndrome – Rowan Stringer – and so I think that sort of increased the urgency in the district to ensure we had a policy in place around concussion management,” Braunovan says.
Stringer, who was a student of John McCrae Secondary School, died May 12, 2013, after suffering two concussions within a week from high school girls’ rugby matches.
Immediately after the incident, several school boards were looking at removing rugby from their sports programs, while others insisted that players wear helmets.
According to Braunovan, the school board isn’t looking at removing any of the sports offered, mainly rugby and football, due to concussion risks.
“To the best of my knowledge,” she says, rugby players won’t be forced to wear helmets while playing.