David Bradley Sports Medicine & Rehabilitation Centre transition to provide a hybrid model of patient care under the current government restrictions

Graphic by Esra Rakab

We have reached the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario. In March 2020, the Ontario provincial government issued a state of emergency, ordering several businesses to close down. This included the David Braley Sport Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre, managed by Gloria Kiefer Preston, where she oversaw the functions of the centre while adjusting operations due to the pandemic.

It was not until July 2020 when the clinic was allowed to re-open, while adhering to social distancing guidelines and health and safety measures implemented by authorities. Despite re-opening, there were still restrictions on surgeries, both outpatient and elective.

Preston also noticed a rapid decline in patient registration, leading to decreased operating hours and fewer staff members. Even with fewer patients, appointment slots were still spread out to allow for further sanitation of the clinic spaces.

C/O David Bradley Sport Medicine & Rehabilitation Centre

As instructed, staff and health practitioners have conducted screening required by authorities, alongside wearing adequate personal protective equipment and documenting all visitors.

“Physiotherapists have done a fantastic job at accommodating and have been doing more than [okay],” said Preston. 

“Physiotherapists have done a fantastic job at accommodating and have been doing more than [okay],”

Gloria Kiefer Preston

Now, as the clinic reduced their operating hours, they have adopted an unconventional method of patient check-ups: telemedicine. As telemedicine is not as prominent in sports, due to the frequency of hands-on assessments, closures due to the pandemic have enabled practitioners with consultations to guide patients to online resources and give medical advice over the phone.

The clinic’s experiential education program — a mandatory component of medical training in a variety of healthcare specialties — had to undergo closures and changes in their operation guidelines, such that the number of student placements had to be reduced. As in-person learning was temporarily put on hold, the transition to online clinical education became a learning curve, adapting to the use of technology for placements for medical residents and physiotherapy students.

Undergraduate kinesiology students were also severely affected, as when the city of Hamilton went into the grey level of lockdown, student therapy placements were not allowed on site until the lockdown level was lifted to red. Student placements predominantly assisted with the screening of athletes.

C/O David Bradley Sport Medicine & Rehabilitation Centre

As part of the clinic’s volunteer program, they transitioned it to online learning but were still able to enroll 75 students. These students had to complete online modules and submit project-based work, such as looking at case studies.

As the government is still aiming to reduce its daily COVID-19 cases and continues with its vaccine rollout program, people are slowly returning to their normal lives with freer schedules as the lockdown has been lifted in their regions.

The clinic’s schedule is now becoming more booked. With that being said, while Preston emphasized there’s still a sense of difficulty in the air, the clinic still aims to continue a hybrid model of patient care and synchronous learning of on-site and online education.

“There was never a “Pandemic 101” course on how to get through a pandemic and it forced us to take a step back and appreciate things,” said Preston.

“There was never a “Pandemic 101” course on how to get through a pandemic and it forced us to take a step back and appreciate things,”

GLORIA KIEFER PRESTON

Wojtek Kraj (#14) is one of the top recruits for the men's volleyball team this past year. Photo by Cindy Cui / Photo Editor.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, decisive and necessary measures have been taken to slow the spread of the virus. On March 23, the Ontario government announced that all non-essential services would be required to close for two weeks. These closures, while necessary, will have major impacts on all sectors of society. The current pandemic is effecting operations for our various sports teams due to closures of facilities and team operations. As precautions being taken against COVID-19 increase and uncertainty about the future remains, McMaster Athletics must be prepared for a long road ahead. 

Let’s begin with recruiting. Naturally, recruiting revolves around one-on-one and in-person contact with the athletes, and often involves coaches watching athletes competing. With school closures expected to last much longer than anticipated, many high school athletics teams will not see the end of their seasons.

These closures would mean that crucial areas of competition, such as city championships, provincials and nationals, will no longer take place in sports such as rugby. Therefore, the previously available opportunities for varsity coaches to base recruiting decisions on are no longer an option. 

Stefan Ptaszek, the head coach of McMaster Football, remarked that while many of the main talents have already been scouted for next year’s team, large high school level tournaments can give many players the opportunity to step up and get noticed by scouts. The playoffs often see several players step up on their roster and perform at a higher level. For some, these opportunities have unfortunately been lost, and with them, chances for scholarships.

The moments in the postseason when an athlete’s performance counts the most could be among the deciding factors for a player making it to the collegiate level. With regard to scholarships, for some students such deciding factors could have been the difference between attending university or not. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9xkAvVnV6M/

This was further acknowledged by Daniel Pletch, the head coach for the men’s rugby team at McMaster. He agreed with Ptsazek’s concerns that obstacles to recruitment could affect an entire incoming class of students.

The real challenge will be the 2021 recruits, as it’s looking unlikely we’ll have a spring high school rugby season. This means identifying the top high school players will be a bigger challenge, especially finding those ‘late bloomers’, who pick up the sport later in high school, and really rely on their grade 12 seasons to develop,” Pletch said.

According to Ptaszek, around 30-50 students per year receive scholarships for their efforts on the football team, which is roughly a third or more of the entire team. It’s clear that scholarships are an integral part of university athletics. The scholarships offered for being on the football team, for example, are held if the student retains a 6.5 GPA or higher. With the added stress and mental pressure the pandemic is putting on everyone, it is not inconceivable to think that this could affect athletes’ grades due to greater mental strain and less access to campus resources.

Official sports bodies have also taken a stance on recruitment. U Sports released a statement on March 16 declaring that it was putting a three week minimum moratorium on recruitment. This would not allow any travel, in-person visits or one-on-one contact with high school athletes, furthering the difficulty to create and harvest new relationships with budding student-athletes. With that being said, “non-contact” measures such as phone calls, video conferences and social media contact are allowed. 

Both Pletch and Ptsazek also made remarks about another main area which will be greatly affected: physical conditioning. Due to city closures and the need to practice physical distancing, it is harder for athletes to access commercial gyms and university athletic facilities. For example, on March 16 the McMaster Pulse announced it was shutting its doors for several weeks and that all athletics services in the David Braley Athletic Centre were also shutting down. Athletes who cannot afford outside facilities or personal equipment may find it harder to remain in shape for the season. 

While public health guidelines must be adhered to in order to reduce the risk of harm as much as possible, the closure of sports, schools and athletics facilities has the potential to deeply affect the lives of student-athletes everywhere. 

 

[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]

 

Photo by Cindy Cui / Photo Editor

As local businesses, schools and social gatherings face cancellations in response to the COVID-10 pandemic, major sports organizations have also been braving turbulent changes.

The four major national sports in North America — basketball, baseball, hockey and football — have all been greatly affected by the virus. The original plan was to have games continue, but not allow fans or unnecessary personnel near games.

In theory, this was a great idea; it would have allowed for play to continue and the multi-billion dollar industry to continue creating some revenue, such as through television ads. However, when the first pro athlete, Rudy Gobert, the center for the Utah Jazz, contracted the virus, this idea went out the window along with any hope of play to continue. After the NBA cancelled games, the rest of the sports world soon followed suit.

As the days progress, more professional athletes are testing positive for COVID-19. This has been attributed to athletes' consistent travels from city to city for games and practices, which makes them more susceptible to contracting the virus and spreading it. 

It has been suggested that the best way to mitigate exposure and transmission of the virus is for athletes to restrict travel and self-quarantine. 

When I read the reports of the National Basketball Association postponing its season for a minimum of 30 days, subject to change depending on the future state of the virus, and the National College Athletics Association ending all of its national tournaments for the year, I wondered how this may affect Canadian university sports. As updates and articles shared information about major sports leagues, the Ontario University Athletics and U Sports had yet to release statements on how they were going to factor the coronavirus into their decision-making.

University and college cancellations across Ontario began on March 12 and 13 with Western University, McMaster University, Mohawk College and others cancelling in-person classes and student events for the remainder of the semester. The U Sports association then followed suit, cancelling that weekends’ scheduled national championships in volleyball and hockey, but continuing with the curling championships.

U Sports’ championships require competing varsity teams to travel to chosen host locations. The volleyball championship was set to take place in Winnipeg and Calgary over the weekend of March 14 to 16 and the hockey championships to take place in Halifax and Charlottetown over that same weekend. 

Both of these tournaments were expecting teams from across the country to attend, from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island. This potentially heightened the risk of spreading the virus. To limit the spread of COVID-19, Canadians have been advised to avoid international non-essential travel; while the travel measures announced on March 16 did not include domestic flights, the situation is continuously changing from day to day. Recently, airlines such as Air Canada began suspending domestic flights. 

This begs the question of why the U Sports National Championships for curling were not cancelled. This tournament involved universities from all over the country such as McMaster University, University of Dalhousie and the University of Alberta, and took place the very same weekend as the aforementioned volleyball and hockey tournaments. 

At the time of writing this article, U Sports had yet to post any material on their social media to answer those questions or comment on why they made contradictory decisions to cancel volleyball and hockey tournaments, while continuing the curling championships. 

After having reached out to U Sports for a statement, John Bower of U Sports stated that the curling championships had been in line with government regulations at the time.

The total number of participants in the Curling championship was inferior to the 250 established by the Government of Manitoba on Thursday and therefore was allowed by the Province to continue and had begun prior to the cancellation of the hockey and volleyball championships,” said Bower. 

It is important to keep in mind that the volleyball championships, which were also planned to take place in Manitoba, and the hockey championships in Prince Edward Island were cancelled.

The following was the response to my questions about their tournament handlings:

As stated by Bower from U Sports.

While these precautions seemed to be adequate at the time of the curling tournament’s start date on March 10, the tournament would go on to see play for another five days. All the players and potential companions travelled in and out of the province over this time. 

The representative from U Sports said that Curling Canada was able to guarantee a safe and secure environment for the curling championships to take place. As we have seen the pandemic continue to spread, it seems that it would have been very difficult to guarantee anything. The tournament should have been shut down.

The U Sports national championships was not alone in the building. The event coincided with the Senior Men’s and Women’s Championships, the Canad Inns Canadian Mixed Doubles Championships and the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA)/Curling Canada Championships. 

The amount of people at any given time in the arena might have been under the mandated 250 person limit, but this limit became quickly outdated as the Centre for Disease Control lowered the limit to no more than 50 people just one day after the tournament finished on March 16. Considering the curling teams, general fans and family members that were in attendance, it is unlikely that this limit was adhered to during the tournament. 

The first red flag was that this tournament was continued while the other national tournaments were cancelled. The second red flag was that there was no postponing or cancelling as the tournament progressed. Just as COVID-19 spread across the country, the red flags spread across this event. 

 

[thesil_related_posts_sc]Related Posts[/thesil_related_posts_sc]

 

Subscribe to our Mailing List

© 2024 The Silhouette. All Rights Reserved. McMaster University's Student Newspaper.
magnifiercrossmenu