Sandro Vella just published this manuscript out of his Ph.D. Injury perceptions and related risk-mitigating interventions are context-dependent. Despite this, most injury surveillance systems are not context-specific as they do not integrate end-users perspectives. This study explored how national team football players, coaches, and health professionals perceive a football-related injury and how their context influences their perceptions and behaviors towards reporting and managing a football injury.
Background
As part of the four-step injury prevention sequence, injury surveillance systems (ISS) have been developed and implemented by sporting organizational bodies. Such systems aim to describe the injury problem and provide the means to develop injury risk mitigation measures to protect athlete health. The definition of a sports injury has been considered a critical factor in injury surveillance studies.
Alongside the injury definition, there is also a need to consider when injuries are or are not reported. The number of reported injuries is influenced by the stakeholders’ socio-ecological factors concerning decisions taken when reporting and managing an injury. For example, in football, it has been suggested that injuries may be underreported to avoid participation restrictions. In this sense, socio-ecological factors will affect the accuracy of reported data due to under or overreporting, affecting how an injury is managed. In this respect, understanding and ingraining socio-ecological factors into an ISS operationalization will enhance its value for stakeholders.
Therefore, Sandro explored how Maltese national team football players, coaches, and health professionals perceive a football-related injury and how their context influences their perceptions and behaviors towards reporting and managing a football injury.
Methods
We conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with Maltese female and male national team football players (n = 7), coaches (n = 3), and health professionals (n = 3) were conducted. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results
Three themes were identified: (1) How do I perceive an injury? This theme consisted of various constructs of a sports injury, yet is commonly defined based on performance limitations. (2) How do I deal with an injury? This theme encapsulated the process of managing the injury (3) What influences my perception, reporting, and management of an injury? A theme that comprised personal and contextual factors that influenced the perception and, consequently, the management of an injury.
Main thematic map illustrating the relationships between themes and their associated sub-themes. Participants highlighted their definition of a football injury, mainly in terms of consequences on pain, performance and participation (theme 1). Their perception of an injury influenced how they approached injury management. When in pain, players self-managed their symptoms before reporting them. injury reporting was based on the perceived pain severity, with injury management becoming a shared responsibility between different members of the team (theme 2). Yet, various interacting modulators, namely, player, relational, situational, and cultural related factors, modulate injury perception and, consequently, the way players manage and report their injury (theme 3).
Conclusion
Performance limitations should be used as part of future injury definitions in injury surveillance systems. Human interaction should be involved in all the processes of an injury surveillance framework, emphasizing its active role to guide the injury management process.
The full manuscript can be accessed here (Open Access)
Sandro Vella, Caroline Bolling, Evert Verhagen & Isabel Sarah Moore (2021): Perceiving, reporting and managing an injury – perspectives from national team football players, coaches, and health professionals, Science and Medicine in Football, DOI: 10.1080/24733938.2021.1985164