Hi everyone. I'm Dana Jay and this is Henry Ford Health System News,
where we showcase our team members' accomplishments and our values of
compassion, innovation, respect, and results.
This time let's start with the headline from our sports medicine team,
according to their new study high school athletes,
aren't sitting on the sidelines long enough after a concussion.
Recently published research by Henry Ford suggests that on average young
athletes should wait 30 days before getting back in the game after their first
concussion. Right now,
Michigan High School Athletic Association rules say players showing signs of a
concussion are benched for just 24 hours.
Players on teams staffed by a Henry Ford athletic trainer are out for at least
five days. We're going to slowly bring you back.
And I explain why we're going to slowly bring you back.
We don't want to just throw you out there where you're going to get hit again,
and then we're dealing with second impact syndrome.
The new research isn't likely to change rules right away, but study coauthor,
Dr. Bill Moutzouros says the hope is it will start to change minds.
When you recognize that it can be up to 30 days to get a young student athlete
back,
you're going to change your mindset and how you advance them in terms of how you
push them in terms of how you test them.
The study examined the records of 357 high school athletes treated for
concussions at Henry Ford from 2013 to 2016.
The findings also suggest female athletes, players with prior concussions,
and those with delayed diagnosis may take more than 30 days to recover.
Moutzouros says research also revealed that student athletes brains don't
heal as quickly as experts previously thought.
We thought that concussion issues would be very short lived.
That they wouldn't have as many attention issues.
That they'd be able to recover to their sport much quicker.
And we found the opposite.
Before the study, it was believed that a brain injury was like most others.
The younger the athlete, the shorter the recovery time.
We need more studies on the younger athlete. Most many of us have children.
We're all worried about them. We all wanted them to be safe.
So we need to recognize that this is a problem for the youth athlete.
While research finds that concussions are still most likely in football, hockey,
and soccer. That doesn't mean they aren't a concern across the board. In fact,
our trainer tells us that every year for four years,
she treated at least one swimmer with a concussion.
An update for you now on our COVID-19 employee relief efforts.
Hundreds of you have pitched in to help teammates who are struggling financially
during the pandemic.
To the tune of $892,000.
The COVID employee financial assistant funds have supported more than 830
employees.
A certified medical assistant at Henry Ford Allegiance Hospital tells us while
she was furloughed, her mom experienced two brain aneurysms.
The fund is helping her get by as she extends her unpaid leave to care for her
mom.
On top of that $45,000 worth of grocery and gas gift
cards have been given out to employees. Speaking of stepping up for one another,
one of our teammates is kicking her hobby into high gear.
As we continue to battle the pandemic in our hospitals and our community.
Liz Thompson spends a lot of her time in her studio.
I have supplies in here. I have sewing supplies.
My computer lives here. I watch my old movies in here.
Generally this is my woman's cave.
When it became her home office during the spring surge in COVID cases,
she looked around and knew exactly how she could use those supplies to help the
residents she works with as a program coordinator at Henry Ford Hospital.
You know,
you're sitting and you're going all these people I know at work are getting
exposed to this. What can I do to help? And it was like,
I have fabric, I can sew.
And I started making the surgical caps for different people in the hospital,
not just the physicians.
The surgical caps put a layer between frontline workers and the airborne virus
and protect hair from being ripped out by the straps on N-95 surgical masks.
Thompson has sewed piles of them since March sending them to the hospital with a
friend.
She saw someone wearing one for the first time in a photo from Henry Ford's nine
minutes of silence for Black Lives Matter.
I saw one of the cardiology fellows and I'm like,
that's, that's my cap in that picture. And it's,
it just felt really good to know that yes they're being used.
When word got out how she was helping frontline workers, donations rolled in.
She uses the money to buy enough, often very cheerful fabric,
to start sewing masks too. And now that she's back to the office,
she hands them out herself.
They know they can't use them when they're with patients,
but if they go into the grocery store,
you need to wear a mask and you might as well have a nicer mask on,
a friendlier mask.
Those brightly covered caps and masks really allow personalities to show
through. And now our feature photo. Actually, we have two.
That's Dr. Jasper Yung an emergency medicine physician at Henry Ford West
Bloomfield and Dr. Evan Lang a radiation oncology resident at
Henry Ford Hospital.
They played together in the Detroit Medical Orchestra and appear in this video,
performing the Bach double violin concerto alongside Grammy
nominated violinist, Joshua Bell.
Bell produced the video as a tribute to healthcare workers and recruited an
orchestra of 10 medical musicians from the U.S. and Canada.
Thanks for spending some time with us today.
And if you have a story idea or a featured photo to share, email it to me at
Newstips@hfhs.org, and I'll see you around