Sports-related injuries are the fourth leading cause of spinal cord injury, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Center. In these emergency situations, athletic trainers work together with EMS professionals to treat an injured athlete to ensure the best possible care. Athletic trainers are multi-skilled allied health care professionals who work in different sports and clinical settings to provide preventive programming, emergency care, general medical assessment, orthopedic evaluation, therapeutic treatment, and rehabilitation of injuries. SSM Health and the North Fond du Lac Fire Department are partnering to review and sharpen skills related to sports equipment removal, head and neck (cervical spine) injury scenarios, and immobilization techniques. Ryan Johnson, MS, LAT, ATC, CSCS, an SSM Health high school outreach athletic trainer, recently spent time collaborating with the North Fond du Lac Fire Department team during two training sessions. “Last football season we had just a few instances in which EMS was needed on the field for a player,” according to Adam Moriarty, North Fond du Lac Fire Department Assistant Chief, EMS Director. “Though we have hand signals with the athletic training staff for them to indicate that EMS is needed, that is where the partnership of patient care ended. I wanted to bring the athletic training staff and my staff together for joint training, so we could learn each other’s roles if and when an on-field emergency occurs, so we can work together as a cohesive unit of patient care.” The training sessions were beneficial to both groups involved to help define clear roles of emergency patient care. The athletic training staff learned how the EMS team assesses and immobilizes patients and were able to ask different questions regarding patient care. Johnson educated the EMS team members on the different brands/models of football helmets and shoulder pads used at Horace Mann (NFDL) High School, including how to effectively and safely remove them. Also, the athletic training staff demonstrated what their initial on-field athlete assessment consists of and their role when EMS is needed. The student-athletes within the School District of North Fond du Lac, as well as visiting student-athletes, now have a better prepared and more cohesive response team that is trained to work together for the safety of the athletes. “This specialized training will provide faster and safer patient care minimizing undue risk due to lack of knowledge of equipment or procedure from the athletic training staff,” Moriarty says. “This training also provided an opportunity for both sets of staff to get to interact with one another and get to know one another a little better, and from experience, working with people you know calms nerves in stressful situations. This is the type of specialized training that may not be used every day, but when it is needed, has the potential to reduce severity of injury or death.” This latest effort is possible thanks to an ongoing relationship between SSM Health, North Fond du Lac Fire Department, and Dr. Michael Grahl, an emergency medicine physician with SSM Health St. Agnes Hospital and EMS medical director. In this specific case, Moriarty and his team reached out to Dr. Grahl. “Dr. Grahl showed enthusiasm about the idea of joint training and got the ball rolling by putting us in contact with Ryan,” Moriarty explains. “From there things quickly started to come together.” “Collaboration between Emergency Medical Services and the Emergency Department is crucial for timely, lifesaving interventions in emergencies,” according to Dr. Grahl. “This partnership ensures that medical care and lifesaving interventions happen faster, allowing for a higher level of care and improved patient outcomes even before patients get to the hospital.” Through Johnson’s coordination, the entire SSM Health athletic training staff was able to come and participate, covering multiple school districts in the greater Fond du Lac area, which will ultimately benefit schools and student-athletes beyond the School District of North Fond du Lac. “By Ryan incorporating his entire staff, we are collectively able to train one another and address specific needs or questions that the athletic trainers may have in their specific community,” according to Moriarty. “We’re looking forward to collaborating more in the future to offer this type of training annually and continue to evolve it, and potentially incorporate sports medicine for additional training and education.” In the end, the training is all about providing a joint, coordinated response that ultimately will benefit the North Fond du Lac and other communities in the future. “It’s important that the public knows that ambulance services and hospitals are coming together so that the highest level of patient care can happen anywhere,” according to Moriarty. “We all educate and train regularly so we can deliver competent and cohesive patient care to optimize the best possible patient outcomes.”
