Edition 9/2000
IEA is pleased to present the December edition of the IEA
Sport Monthly Update. This
monthly publication will address topical issues specific to the
management of sport. For
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(refer home page of website, www.ieasport.com.au).
The newsletter will be delivered via Email only.
We welcome questions from subscribers which will be
addressed in future editions of the Monthly Update.
If
You Cannot Measure It You Cannot Manage It
The
risks to be managed by sport are many and varied, with one very
important area of risk being injury to participants. A tried and
true management philosophy is "if you cannot measure it you
cannot manage it", and this is just as relevant for sporting
injuries as it is to retail sales, cash flows etc. How can
you manage the incidence and severity of sporting injuries unless
statistical data is collected in this regard; how can you evaluate the
success or otherwise of prevention programs unless you can compare the
number of injuries occurring before the implementation of the program
compared to after implementation?
Historically
there has been limited statistics available in regard to sports
injury, but this is changing. The SportSafe program in
association with Sports Medicine Australia provides valuable resources
to assist with injury data collection. Much more research is now
being carried out, particularly at the elite level, but
information in regard to the grass roots level of sport is still
limited.
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The
Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit (QISU) collects data based on
emergency department presentations to various hospitals throughout
Queensland and their injury bulletin of May 2000 provides interesting
reading. The following information comes from that
bulletin.
During
1998-1999 the QISU collected data on 9,031 emergency department
presentations at participating hospitals for an injury where the
activity was reported as being engaged in a sports activity.
Trends were as follows.
-
10%
of injury emergency department presentations were sport
related
-
football
codes made up more than 60% of sport injuries
-
a
third of sporting injury victims were children aged 5 to 14 years
-
male
victims outnumbered females 3 to 1
-
the
highest number of injury presentations were aged 10 to 14 years,
70% were aged 5 to 24 years
-
two
thirds of injuries were fractures or sprains and strains
-
the
parts of body injured varied from sport to sport, but overall the
most common parts of the body injured were the hand and
ankle
-
seventy
percent of injuries were caused by either a fall or being struck
by or in collision with another person
The
bulletin also addresses injury prevention and the following comments
are taken directly from the publication.
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