Athletic and Playground Injuries

Abstract

E very School Nurse can recount an episode of being called to the playground or the athletic field to help with the treatment and management of an injury to a child or a staff member. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are about 1 million sports and recreation injuries on school property each year, accounting for an estimated one third of all injuries to children ages 10 to 17 (CDC, 2008). It is an expected part of the School Nurse’s role to be a first responder and to be able to intervene and manage in these situations. Professional School Nurses have a large role to play in the development of safety practices for sports and recreation programs in the schools and the associated risk management programs that shape these practices. The proper identification of risk and subsequent development of policy and practice to minimize risks relies on an assessment of physical and human factors data. This allows one to obtain a clear idea of which risks are most pressing or need to be addressed in a comprehensive and coordinated policy. Without good data to use in the development of safety and risk management programs, the resulting policies and procedures meant to assure safe playing conditions might not address the most common or most concerning problems that can represent a risk to participants. School Nurses need to understand how to locate this information to effectively contribute to safety and risk management programs. Data related to school injuries are gathered by many kinds of agencies, including public and private organizations. At the national level, the CDC sponsors a variety of surveys related to school health and publishes this information online at its Web site. State departments of education and health are also good repositories of state-level statistics, usually aggregated information collected from school districts statewide. States have also implemented voluntary reporting programs. For example, Utah has developed and implemented a voluntary standardized “Student Injury Report” for school personnel to report injuries to the state health department. Utah has been collecting data since 1989. Some injury reporting systems are the result of joint state and federal initiatives. In 1995, CDC sponsored the development of the National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS) through the University of Northern Iowa, which serves as a national resource for the latest educational and research information on playground safety (see sidebar). In 2005, CDC sponsored the High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study, which was conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio (CDC, 2006). This was the first randomized study of national representation to focus on sports-related injuries in high school. Injury data are also collected by hospital emergency departments, trauma centers, and the risk management departments of state governments and insurance companies. Wherever they are found and however they are collected, athletics and playground injury data for schools are an important component for any safety program aimed at improving the risks for school children and staff. It is essential for School Nurses to know how these data are collected and aggregated, how to obtain them for planning purposes, and how they can be used to more effectively manage the risks of athleticsand playground-related injuries. Accessing this information requires not much more than basic skill in Web-based research. Understanding the data obtained and how they might be used to manage the risk of these activities and to promote safety practices among students and staff is essential and should be an expected component of the School Nurse’s role in the school environment. ■ Consortium of School Nurse Educators