On Saturday 20 February 2021 Sports Medicine Australia (SMA) held a live face to face workshop, Concussion in Community Sport with world renowned concussion expert Associate Professor Andrew Gardner and experienced Sport and Exercise Physician Dr Robert Reid.
The workshop with the assistance of the ACT Government and the NSW Office of Sport provided 40 SMA delegates with education around the growing issues around identifying and managing concussion in community sport, following on from SMA’s Concussion in Sport webinar held in November last year.
Hosted by the University of Canberra, Attendees were informed on a range of topics ranging from identifying the signs and symptoms through to recovery management and the steps to return to play and general life.
Both Andrew and Robert covered the three R’s – recognise, remove, refer, and that no two cases of concussion are the same. While we may think we will know it when we see it, identifying concussion is not as obvious as an athlete ‘seeing stars’ or loss of consciousness, the brain is a very intricate and complex structure and we cannot always predict it’s reaction to injury.
The audience was shown real life examples of concussion cases within games with detailed explanation as to how each individual case was handled and the process of each players return to sport.
A feature of the event was the broad range of experience within the audience which made for excellent collaboration, sharing and recommendations for local sports medicine professionals, using evidence and statistics from both Andrew and Robert’s presentation to base discussion.
This workshop offered attendees an in-depth understanding of what concussion can look like and how to practically respond to it if a case should arise.