Perceptions of Athletic Injuries by Athletes, Coaches, and Medical Professionals

Abstract

35 athletes, their coaches, and medical professionals independently assessed the disruption, seriousness, and short-term effects of the athletes' athletic injuries. Athletes underestimated the disruption and short-term effects of the injury when compared to medical professionals. 25 lower level athletes and those with no previous serious athletic injury overestimated the short-term effects of their injuries. Coaches overestimated the disrupting effects of the injury for 10 higher level athletes and 25 athletes with no previous injury.

Incidence, Causes, and Severity of High School Football Injuries on FieldTurf versus Natural Grass

“…There were several potential limitations to the study that may have influenced the type and number of injuries reported. These included the inability to determine and control the inherent random variation in injury typically observed in high-collision team sports 8, 38 ; the strength and conditioning status of the athletes and variations in the type of equipment used 2, 17, 29, 30, 35, 64 ; weather conditions and variations in field conditions 2 ; differences in postural/joint integrity, musculoskeletal structure, and biomechanics of movement 9, 28, 70, 72 ; coaching style and play calling 2, 7, 24, 35 ; quality of officiating and foul play 71 ; player position and actual versus average time of exposure to injury 25, 29, 33 ; sport skill level, intensity of play, and fatigue level at time of injury 9, 23, 33, 36, 64, 70, 71 ; an athlete's ephemeral response to help seeking, injury, and subsequent pain 1, 9, 11, 35, 40, 52 ; player eligibility 2 ; unreported congenital/developmental factors predisposing an athlete to additional injury 9, 30, 35, 71, 77 ; or simply unforeseen mishap. 28, 38 Also, there is always the opportunity for an injury to go unreported despite the comprehensive nature of any reporting system, 35 and although our study revealed significant and unique differences in injury causes, generalizability of the findings across the country may not be warranted because of varying environmental, field, and injury management conditions.…”

“…11, 28, 56, 68 The daily evaluation and follow-up telephone visits also increased the opportunity to quantify and track typically overlooked minor indices that often exacerbate into chronic or overuse problems. 11, 28, 68…”

Influence of Definition and Data Collection on the Incidence of Injuries in Football

“…The registration of an injury (and its severity) may also be biased by the person who determines that an injury has occurred. 34 Crossman et al 5 showed that athletes underestimated the disruption and short-term effects of an injury when compared with the estimation of medical professionals. Commonly, the player will report to his trainer when he considers himself injured, and, in most of the studies, the injured players are subsequently examined by either the team physician or by a physician who is involved in the research project.…”

An integrated model of response to sport injury: Psychological and sociological dynamics

“…& Phelps, 1995;Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1991) about the psychological responses of athletes to injury. Two studies have compared the perceptions of athletes, coaches, and medical professionals (Brown, 1995;Crossman, Jamieson, & Hume, 1990).…”

“…the limited relationship between physicians' ratings of injury severity and athletes' postinjury depression (Brewer, Linder, & Phelps, 1995), the discrepancies between athletes', physicians' and coaches' ratings of the causes. seriousness, and disruptiveness of injury (Brown, 1995;Crossman et al, 1990) and the discrepancies in perceptions held by injured athletes and athletic trainers during the initial injury evaluation (Kahanov & Fairchild, 1994) support the need for caution in completely accepting the perceptions of either athletes or medical professionals. Clearly steps should be taken to enhance insight and the clarity of communication between the injured athlete and all members of the sports medicine team to provide a complete picture of athlete emotional states.…”