Sports Medicine is proud to be following the Canadian Concussion Collaborative (CCC) guidelines for a good Concussion Clinic, and proud to note that we have been exceeding most of their recommendations since our program’s inception. Along with a player’s Family Physician, Sports Medicine provides multidisciplinary concussion care, management and treatment. A Sport Medicine Physician with experience in concussion management is available when athletes require further assessment and ongoing involvement regarding medical stability, trajectory of care, need for medical speciality referral and decisions on clearance to return to activity.
The NCP Predator AAA policy has made it mandatory for all zone players with a suspected concussion to be seen by a physician for diagnosis and medical clearance, before getting back in the game. This ensures players are receiving proper diagnosis and following a 10- step gradual return in a hockey-specific environment. These steps include a treadmill test, and an exertion test prior to medical clearance. If Multimodal Testing is available, one additional layer of risk management is utilized with objective comparative data.
Players are able to see their progress through clear guidelines in the return-to play- protocol, which outlines the recovery process into a series of steps. The goal of the process is to slowly add safe and manageable activity levels; gauging how a player responds at each step and progressively adding more if all goes well. This is done through, at a minimum, a light NON-contact practice, an Intense NON-contact practice and a full contact practice before clearance.
The progressive concussion policy involved the collaborative work of our medical professionals, coaches, trainers, and families to make sure players were supported in every step of recovery so they could return to their favourite game safely, and ready to play. One of the critical pieces of the implementation process was the fact that all coaches and