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Original research
Concussion guideline implementation perceptions and experiences among parents of community-level Australian Football junior players
  1. Peta E White1,
  2. Johna Register-Mihalik2,
  3. Alex Donaldson1,
  4. S John Sullivan3,
  5. Caroline F Finch1
  1. 1 Australian Collaboration for Research into Injury in Sport and Its Prevention, Federation University Australia, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
  2. 2 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
  3. 3 School of Physiotherapy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
  1. Correspondence to Professor Caroline F Finch; c.%C2%ADfinch{at}federation.edu.au

Abstract

Background/aim Concussion guidelines exist for multiple community sports. Parents are key stakeholders in guideline implementation and in appropriate responses following concussive injury. The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to understand how parents of community-level Australian Football (AF) players experience and perceive concussion guidelines in order to inform the design and implementation of concussion guidelines in community sport.

Methods A cross-sectional qualitative approach was adopted to allow for an open and detailed exploration of the views of parents of junior community AF players (ie, those aged <16 years) regarding concussion guidelines of the AF League (AFL)—the national governing body for AF. Participants were 15 parents of junior community AF players from two clubs affiliated with a large regional community AF League.

Results The key experiences and perceptions of the parents included appreciation that the guidelines outlined the postconcussion process that should be followed, desires for better understanding of the guidelines by general practitioners (ie, medical doctors) who care for children with concussion, having more readily available information for parents and receiving more formal policy guiding timing of return-to-participation following concussion. Difficulties with the guidelines not addressing delayed presentations of concussion were also frequently mentioned.

Conclusions Parents are key stakeholders in concussion prevention and care in community sport. As such, their input should be considered when developing guidelines and resources for community sport. Furthermore, concussion information should be made available to parents in an easily accessible and community-friendly form.

  • Concussion
  • Qualitative
  • Australian football
  • Implementation

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2016-000215

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    Footnotes

    • Acknowledgements The Australian Collaboration for Research into Injury in Sport and its Prevention is one of the International Research Centres for the Prevention of Injury and Protection of Athlete Health supported by the International Olympic Committee. Aspects of this work were undertaken when authors PEW, AD and CFF were previously employed at Monash University.

    • Contributors PEW and JS designed the focus group schedule. PEW and AD conducted the focus groups. PEW and JRM, with advice from JS, undertook the qualitative coding and analysis of the focus group data. CFF contributed to the design of the larger study that this project was associated with. All authors assisted with the interpretation of the findings. PEW led the writing of the paper and all other authors contributed to its editing and gave their approval of the manuscript for submission.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC CF12/1178 2012000575).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.