Healthcare communication and sports injuries prevention

By Malcolm T. F. Read, Paul Wade (Note1)

When we were watching the Olympic Game, the World Cup, and many other world-class sports events, we could easily learn from the news that some star athletes would bring their personal physical therapists with them to obtain the most timely and relevant advises. This is a typical case of healthcare communication particularly in physical therapy. Physical therapy is a broad study. It includes the sports medicine, early treatment, long-term care, rehabilitation, the study of occupational injury, spinal cord injury, and poor posture and aches and etc. In this article, I will talk about some health care communication media and how it works on preventing sports injuries.

Unlike the general medicine study, physical therapy is seldom discussed solely through social media such as TVs and newspapers. However, it becomes more and more important in today’s society because of the growing population that does sports.

If you are or will be doing sports, let’s do some very simple questions to see if you are doing it in the right way. First, do you wear proper sports shoes? Do you feel comfortable wearing them? Second, do you know how many times you exercise per week, and how many hours you do for each time? Third, do you know the strength of your body and what kind of sports is suitable for your current physical condition? Fourth, do you know the following figures that indicate your Health Related Physical Fitness? 1. Body Mass Index (BMI) 2. Cardiorespiratory Endurance (CR endurance) 3. Muscular Strength & Endurance  4. Flexibility.

If you find it hard to answer most of the questions, I suggest you to reach out some resources that could prevent the occurrence of sports injuries. The distribution of the health care knowledge, such as the prevention method of sports injuries, is called health care communication. Health care communication could be applied in any kinds of media tools such as TVs, radio broadcast, newspapers, magazines, and most importantly, the internet.  

The most pervasive tool we could use to search the knowledge of sports medicine is the Internet.  Here are several resources that could provide users suggestions and solutions to specific problems.

The Stop Sports Injuries website

http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org

This website categorized many types of sports injuries, such as those of baseball, basketball, cheer-leading, football, golf, and etc. You can click on quick links in each sports category and find out useful prevention tips.

(resource: www.stopsportsinjuries.org)

The Virtual Sports Injuries Clinic website

http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/injurylist.htm

(resource: www. sportsinjuryclinic.net)

This website provides terminology explanations for post-sports injuries and treatments. For example, when talking about ankle broken, it tells you which the common ways ankle broken occurs are. It is useful for beginners to learn the physical structures for further research. The picture of the anatomy of the body or body parts could help users understand the position of the injury.






Note 1: "Sports Injuries: A Unique Guide to Self-Diagnosis and Rehabilitation" By Malcolm T. F. Read, Paul Wade - Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier (2009) - Paperback -

225 pages - ISBN 044306816X

Introduction

 Hello readers,

This is my first post and I will be writing articles to talk about healthcare communication in physiotherapy, or physical therapy, for the next eight weeks. Here is something about me and why I am interested in the topic:

I am business person but I have been interested in physical therapy since late 2008. I remember the time I had a severe pain in my waist, and had to leave the job that I loved very much. Ironically, I was told that I received a promotion almost at the same time I started to feel the ache. That was a turning point of my life. Having been told that I should not miss any treatment sessions, I went to see the physical therapist for three months in a row.

When I started to run back and forth between the office and the rehabilitation center in the hospital, I learned the importance of staying healthy. I also set up a goal to explore the healthcare industry, particularly in the area of physical therapy. In fact, the severe waist pain I got resulted from the sport injury I received when I was playing volleyball as an undergrad. The injury was not treated properly, and it became a chronic ache. My busy life in the business world worsened the condition.

I believe that lack of the knowledge and information could lead anyone to the situation I was faced with. By improving healthcare communication for physical therapy, we can definitely arouse the public's interest in taking good care of the body. For example, doing proper stretches after exercising, and periodically taking a physical examination, to name a few, are some types of information that could be more effectively distributed, to reduce easily avoidable physical conditions.