Monday, June 24, 2024
Media Contact: Sydney Trainor | Communications and Media Relations Specialist | 405-744-9782 | sydney.trainor@okstate.edu
BlairhairThrough Virtual Education Programs Ready to expand Celebrating our first anniversary
Oklahoma State University’s Athletic Training-Sports Medicine Project ECHO Line is marking one year since making a potentially life-saving impact on fields and courts in Oklahoma and beyond.
Nearly 70% of Oklahoma schools do not have access to trainers for their student-athletes, leaving students vulnerable to injury without the proper tools and personnel to protect their health and well-being at all levels of competition. Schools are missing out on a critical opportunity to impact the future health of their students, and coaches and administrators lack access to best practices in this burgeoning field of health care.
Athletic Training-Sports Medicine ECHO was established in 2023 to address this gap in the identification, mitigation and treatment of sports-related injuries through the Project ECHO knowledge sharing format.
“Athletic trainers save lives,” said Lance Walker, Rick and Gayle Mancrief Executive Director of the Human Performance & Nutrition Institute. “The OSU Athletic Training-Sports Medicine ECHO Line gives a voice to the unsung heroes who are on the front lines of school and community sports programs helping young people safely navigate the joys and perils of athletic competition.”
Project ECHO provides access to specialist medical care for complex health conditions affecting athletes. In the first year, 20 athletic training sessions addressed complex sports issues including concussions, mental health issues in young athletes, adolescent stroke, return to play criteria and joint dislocations.
These sessions attracted over 870 participants and awarded over 479 free continuing medical education credits.
Project ECHO It will be integrated into a hub-and-spoke remote instruction model, bringing expertise to rural and underserved communities through a twice-monthly virtual presentation program run by the OSU Health Sciences Center.
Participants in the online program discuss their challenges with a multidisciplinary team of experts in athletic training, sports medicine, counseling, and nutrition. Users log in to each session from different states and even across international borders.
“The philosophy of everyone teaching and everyone learning is the motto of Project ECHO, and this philosophy also applies to Athletic Training-Sports Medicine ECHO, where members and experts share case information and real-life experiences on the topic of the day,” Walker said. “Our team of experts continues to log in regularly as they learn from frontline healthcare workers who are intimately familiar with the lives of student-athletes.
“Participation levels have only increased throughout the year as underserved groups of providers find value in the best practices shared at each session.”
Participants will include athletic trainers, coaches, school athletic directors, nurses, physician assistants, physical therapists, local physicians and school administrators.
“We partnered with groups seeking information to better support the students we serve, and the Project ECHO format is ideal for sharing the latest research, medical practices and sports injury management guidelines online to arm students as they return to the courts, arenas and fields each week,” said Aric Warren, OSU-CHS athletic training professor and Hub team leader. “For many students, these health care providers may be their only access to quality care, nutrition and fitness information and guidance to put them on a solid path to a healthy future. This kind of lifelong success can’t even be measured.”
This virtual professional development resource has been especially helpful for rural school districts that may not have access to these resources.
“The depth and breadth of information, knowledge, wisdom and skill at Athletic Training ECHO is incredible,” said Jim Mansfield, athletic trainer at Holland Hall School in Tulsa. “It’s a great mix of different backgrounds. This way you get a broader perspective, different viewpoints, different angles, different ideologies.”
The OSU Athletic Training-Sports Medicine ECHO is sponsored and coordinated by HPNRI and OSU-CHS. Sessions are held the second and fourth Wednesday of each month from noon to 1 p.m.
“ECHO brings to light different topics that we as physical therapists may not have thought about and brings athletic trainers, PTs, MDs, DOs, all into the same conversation to offer different perspectives,” says physical therapist Nicole Parrish. “It requires collaboration of ideas and we all have to be on the same page and work to improve athletes, keep kids in sports, keep kids active and get the next generation active. We’re all in it for the kids.”
