As Trainer Coordinator for Heidelberg Junior Football Club, I am responsible for reviewing and following up the incidents for all 17 of our football teams. This can be an extremely time-consuming task. HURT has allowed incident details to be provided to me instantly. Trainers no longer need to email or upload paper incident forms to me. With paper forms there can be delays or the risk of losing paper forms which contain confidential information. Incident follow up is now much less time consuming and much more detailed and accurate information is stored within the incident.
Incident information can be emailed to parents or directly to GP if required. This is significant if the child needs to seek medical attention. A report can be emailed so that medical practitioners know exact details – what the mechanism of injury was, time of injury, care given etc. This is particularly important for Head Injuries when a medical practitioner requires information that may determine return to play due to the concussion assessment at time of the incident.
Having the Head Injury Clearance form and information all in the one place is amazing. The ability to provide incident details to medical practitioners, allows them to make a more informed decision regarding a players concussion status – we now provide information such as GCS and observations at the time of injury.
I know have a clear list of players who require medical clearance. Once a medical clearance certificate is supplied, I can upload the certificate and the date of clearance is also documented.
HURT allows for incident follow-up to be documented ‘real time’ or retrospectively, and is stored in the same place as the incident. This also reduces the risk of documenting on the wrong player, and also allows me to document from my phone wherever I am. Many times, I take phone calls from parents when I am away from a desktop or I am unable to take notes. Having the platform on my phone makes it much easier for me to document straight away.
It is much easier to access Next of Kin details, medical information and allergies, allowing instant important information to Trainers, and ease of ‘handover’ if an ambulance attends and a parent/guardian is not at the game. Occasionally trainers may need to ‘fill in’ for a team they are unfamiliar with. Having the ability to see important medical information such as ‘Asthma Action Plan’ or ‘Diabetes Plan’ allows definitive care to be given more timely and safely.
HURT provides long term safe storage of player incident information. From a Trainer Coordinator perspective, this is extremely important for player insurance. A player may require incident information many years after the incident (e.g. for an ongoing injury). A player looking to be drafted in the future may also require injury/incident information – especially any concussions sustained during their junior football. This allows us to provide this information to our players in the future if required.
Our trainers have a huge range of first aid / medical experience. The platform caters well to our ‘1st time Trainers’ right through to medical practitioners.
Excellent IT support during game time, and very responsive to all the trainers questions, suggestions and feedback. Changes were implemented in a timely manner, and communicated to the trainers to keep them up to date.
The team trainers all liked that they weren’t completing incident forms after the game, and the platform is much less time consuming than filling out a paper form but provides a lot more detail due to drop down boxes and pre-filled data. They could also document if they followed up with a parent.
As Trainer Coordinator I had the visibility to see all documentation, but also the ability to write secure confidential notes that the team trainer could not see. Parents may disclose further information to me about an incident, so it was important for to be able to document this information in a secure location.
HURT allows me to look for any incident themes by auditing the data. In particular as a club, we have been able to look at the incidence of injuries in our Girls teams, and we will use this data to help with training and coaching to prevent further injuries. The sharing of this information between clubs and universities would be beneficial for the AFL, as HURT has the ability to track a lot of data.
The platform allows our club to securely store medical information, and make it easily accessible in the future. It is important for me to be able to hand over this information in the future, and HURT will allow this to be a seamless process for all future Trainer Coordinators.
It would be amazing to be able to share incident information between clubs. For example, we currently have no way of knowing how many head injuries a child has sustained if they change clubs. It would be wonderful for this information to be part of the child’s registration as a player to any new club.
Thank you so much for your support during the 2024 season, and I hope we can use your platform again in 2025.
