OXFORD — The Oxford Hills School Board of Directors has been asked to consider a “return to play” policy for students who have received or are suspected of receiving a concussion during a school athletic competition.
“We saw a lot of concussions last year,” school nurse Ann Johnson told the Board of Directors at its Monday night meeting. Some 20 students received concussions during last fall’s sports season alone, she said.
“It’s more than we’ve seen before and scattered among the sports,” she said. Students had concussions from field hockey, cheerleading and a cross country skiing event.
“If there’s any doubt, they’re out for the day. Then they have to go through the process,” she said. A student must be assessed by the multi-part “Return to Play” criteria before being cleared to return to the athletic field under the HeadMinder program.
“This is a big change from what we’ve been doing. It takes every body paying attention to what’s going on,” she said.
Using an orange in a jar filled with water, Dr. Kate Hurlihy of Western Maine Pediatrics, described the physical effects of a concussion that can be caused by not only a blow to the head but a simple jostling of the head in a sports contact, she said.
Deb Nichols, a pediatric nurse practitioner with the school-based health center of Western Maine Health in Norway, has been trained in the nationally recognized assessment test.
“If there’s any doubt, they’re out for the day. Then they have to go through this process.”
The process requires students to undergo a series of cognitive tests that help assess head-related sports injury and return to play decisions. It requires, in part, that a student be symptom free for 48 hours, not the current 24 hours that is generally used. It also allows for a more accurate assessment particularly of students who may try to hide symptoms because they want to return to the sports field.
Reaction time, memory and other neurological functions are measured. The athlete can then take a post trauma test, if injured, and the results are compared with the student’s baseline. Then there are followup tests to monitor the student.
According to its website, HeadMinder was founded in New York City in 1999 and is a technology company that is dedicated to the development of Internet-based neurocognitive assessment tools.
All coaches will be trained in the program by this fall, Nichols said.
ldixon@sunjournal.com
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