Current Concussion Knowledge, Beliefs, Education, and Management Practices Among Irish Post-Primary PE Teachers

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Physical education (PE) teachers play an important role in concussion recognition and management in schools both in an academic and activity based setting. This study aimed to identify Irish post-primary PE teachers’ concussion knowledge, beliefs, education and management practices. Methods:  An anonymous online survey, adapted to the Irish context from the validated BAKPAC-TEACH, was completed by 128 PE teachers (female = 74/123; 60.2%; male = 49/123; 39.8%, 36.1 ± 10.9 years), representing 4% of registered PE teachers in Ireland. Results: PE teachers reported 3.5 ± 4.7 students suffer with a sports-related concussion in their classroom annually and 43.9% previously had a student sustain a concussion during their PE class. Most received concussion education (58.6%), largely provided by sporting bodies. They frequently identified dizziness (93.0%) and headaches (92.2%) as concussion symptoms, but less commonly emotional (more emotional = 36.5%, nervous or anxious = 33.6%, sadness = 28.9%) or sleep (35.2%) symptoms. All PE teachers knew that a concussion requires immediate removal from a game/practice. PE teachers demonstrated less perceived knowledge and confidence relating to academic adjustments and return to learn criteria. Just 31.3% reported their school facilitates academic adjustments. Conclusion: Tailored concussion education addressing knowledge gaps highlighted in this study should be developed. A concussion policy and an academic support team in each school should be established and widely publicised to enhance the support of concussed students in returning to school.

KEYWORDS:

• Head injury
• physical education
• school
• traumatic brain injury

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to all the PE teachers who completed the survey. We also thank all those that helped distribute the survey including the school staff, staff in all three PE undergraduate programmes in Ireland (DCU, UCC, and UL), and the PEAI.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was granted by the Dublin City University Human Research Ethics Committee (Reference number 2021_12-SOC-ATT).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.