PediaCast 171 * Summer Conditioning

 

Topics

  • Summer Conditioning for Student Athletes

Guests

  • Dr Thomas Pommering

    Medical Director of Sports Medicine

    Nationwide Children’s

  • Kerry Waple

    Senior Athletic Trainer

    Nationwide Children’s

Links

Transcript

Announcer 1: This is PediaCast.

[Music]

Announcer 2: Welcome to PediaCast, a pediatric podcast for parents. And now, direct from the campus of Nationwide Children’s, here is your host, Dr. Mike!

Dr. Mike Patrick: Hello everyone and welcome once again to PediaCast. It is episode 171 for Thursday, June 21st 2011, and we’re calling this one Summer Conditioning for Student Athletes. It’s a good title because we’re joined today by the Director of the Sports Medicine Program here at Nationwide Children’s, Dr. Tom Pommering, and also our Chief Athletic Trainer, Kerry Waple is also here.

01:12

Before we get to them though, I want to remind you that if there’s a topic that you think would be great for PediaCast, it’s easy to get a hold of us. Just go to pediacast.org and click on the contact link. You can also email pediacast@gmail.com or call the voice line at 347-404-KIDS. That’s 347-4704-K-I-D-S.

And I know that we’ve had a whole string of these interview shows, which I think is great, but that also means there’s been a lot of listener questions that we’ve not been answering. And so, I just want to encourage you, we’re kind of putting together a pediatric all star panel, I’d like to call it, and we’re going to have some seasoned primary care physicians in the studio and kind of have a round table discussion and answer a bunch of your questions all at once. So, keep those questions coming. Just because we haven’t done them in a couple of weeks, keep the comments coming and the questions coming because we are going to get to all of those.

02:06

I also want to remind you the information presented in every episode of PediaCast is for general educational purposes only. We do not diagnose medical conditions or formulate treatment plans for specific individuals. So, if you have a concern about your child’s health make sure you call your doctor and arrange a face-to-face interview and hands on physical examination.

Also, your use of this program is subject to the PediaCast terms of use agreement which you can find over at pediacast.org. All right, so let’s turn our attention to our studio guest today. Dr. Tom Pommering is the Medical Director of the Nationwide Children’s Sports Medicine Program and an assistant professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

He is fellowship-trained and board-certified in Sports Medicine and is a member of the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine. In addition to caring for student athletes, Dr. Pommering teaches Pediatric and Family Medicine residence, Sport Medicine fellows, athletic trainers, school nurses and coaches and he’s also served as team physician for high school, college and semi-professional athletic teams in Central Ohio.

03:13

And another mark for his resume, Dr. Pommering is the first repeat guest specialist on PediaCast, so welcome back to the show Dr. Pommering.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Thanks Mike. Glad to be here.

Dr. Mike Patrick: We are glad to have you. And back in the early days of PediaCast, in fact I had to go back and look, it was episode 51. We’re now in 171.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Wow, that’s impressive.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Back in episode 51 too is year 2007. We talked about football safety and we had little more humble surroundings back then. I was in my basement, pretty much on an old makeshift table, didn’t have this nice equipment that we have now, and you were at your house on a cordless phone. Do you remember this?

Dr. Tom Pommering: Oh yes.

Dr. Mike Patrick: We were on Skype and your phone battery went dead.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes. Everything that could have went wrong went wrong for the beginning.

04:01

Dr. Mike Patrick: Halfway to the interview, but the folks didn’t really know it because we edited that out. But I remember you were running up and down the stairs trying to get a new battery and it was quite comical, actually.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes. It was a good distant memory.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Right. We can laugh about it now. I appreciate you coming back despite that. Nice studio now, huh?

Dr. Tom Pommering: Oh this is great. State of the art.

Dr. Mike Patrick: And we are really happy Nationwide Children’s has done well for us in putting us together. Although the walls are a little barren, so we’re still working on that, but we’re coming along. OK. So, Dr. Pommering is not the only guest in the studio today. We also have Kerry Waple, and Kerry is the Senior Athletic Trainer with Nationwide Children’s Sports Medicine.

And in addition to being a certified athletic trainer and certified strength and conditioning specialist, Kerry also some pretty impressive marks on her resume including serving as the athletic trainer for the 1994 US Olympic Festival, the 1995 Pan-American Games, the 1996 US Summer Olympic Team in Atlanta.

05:04

And since 1997 she’s been a member of the US Olympic Committees Sports Medicine Society, and most recently she has served as athletic trainer for the USA Basketball in the World Championships for Women’s Basketball in Croatia and the USA Basketball 2003 National Team Trials at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

She’s spent several months in residence at that same center as a visiting athletic trainer, helping prepare athletes for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Greece. In addition to Olympic duties, Kerry has served on the Sports Medicine Faculty at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Virginia, and Capitol University here in Central Ohio.

She admits to loving her work with athletes at all levels of sport, from Olympic to college to high school to middle school because, in her own words, “All competitors have championships and medals to win.” So welcome to PediaCast Kerry.

Kerry Waple: Thank you.

Dr. Mike Patrick: We are really excited to have you here. So the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. That is so cool.

06:01

Kerry Waple: Beautiful place.

Dr. Mike Patrick: And lots of amazing experiences I bet.

Kerry Waple: Yes. They’ve got some incredible people there, not only in terms of the athletes coming through but the staff and the things that they’re actually able to accomplish, I learned a lot while I was there.

Dr. Mike Patrick: That is great. And when you’re in residence there, so you lived in apartment and basically just there all the time, just that the athletes beckon call, basically?

Kerry Waple: Well, I don’t know about the beckoning. But yes, when the visiting athletic trainers come in, I was actually sabbatical that I was there for. So I had a few months and lived right on their campus in the athletes’ apartment that they have set up and they’d really take care of you.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Do the summer and the winter folks, are they all there at the same time or are there separate facilities or one there for one part of the year and then the winter people come over? How does that work?

Kerry Waple: No, there’s actually three Sports Medicine or, I should say, US Olympic Training Centers in the country, Lake Placid, Chula Vista outside of San Diego, and then Colorado Springs. So each one may focus on their own particular sports in those three centers, but then they’re the all year-round. So, you may have skiing bunking right next to softball.

07:10

Dr. Mike Patrick: Got you, yes.

Kerry Waple: It’s a great place.

Dr. Mike Patrick: I saw a thing on ESPN, the Men’s Short Track Speed Ice Speed Skater. Remember Ohno?

Kerry Waple: Apolo Ohno?

Dr. Mike Patrick: Apolo Ohno. That was it. Was he at your place?

Kerry Waple: He was, yes. He trains at the Colorado Springs.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Did you meet him?

Kerry Waple: I did. I worked with him quite a bit.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Oh so you know. That’s just like, he’s like a rock star. That is great. Now, another question I have – I know we’re here to talk about summer conditioning, but you know, hey we got an Olympian.

Dr. Tom Pommering: You got to take advantage of that.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Well, yes. Do trainers get to march in with opening ceremonies or you just get good seats?

Kerry Waple: A little bit of both. We’re athletic trainers and that’s who they staff their medical staff with, there’s athletic trainers and then physicians. And during opening ceremonies and closing ceremonies, there is a handful of the medical support staff mixed amongst the athletes in case something happens and that they need something there. So if we are all dressed in our garb and if we are not marching in with them, we’re in the stand. So that’s one of the perks of being a [Cross-talk], but that was pretty neat.

08:20

Dr. Mike Patrick: That is really cool. OK, well enough about the Olympics. Let’s start out. Dr. Pommering, if you could just sort of describe for our listeners, what is the primary purpose of Nationwide Children’s Sports Medicine Program?

Dr. Tom Pommering: So Mike, what we do at Nationwide Children’s Sports Medicine is we see young athletes of ages, very young, pretty much when they start to enter school all the way up through college age for injuries. For acute injuries, we see kids, sometimes parents want them to come in and be seen for concussions. We’ll see kids for sometimes injury prevention type visits to try to prevent an injury that’s coming on or be talking to talking to them about their injury hadn’t prevented from coming back.

09:04

So it’s more of multi… There are six or seven primary care physicians that work in, the rest of our are athletic trainers and physical therapists and really just take a team approach to get these kids back to what they want to do.

Dr. Mike Patrick: So you’re looking prevention, treatment, rehab, really the whole gamut of service. And then, looking on the website I see you have a huge staff of athletic trainers.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes. Kerry could probably give me the exact number, but it’s in the mid 20s, I think.

Kerry Waple: I think we’re hiring our 22nd. We just hired our 22nd.

Dr. Mike Patrick: That’s amazing.

Kerry Waple: Which is a big growth in the last six years.

Dr. Mike Patrick: So you provide athletic trainers then for schools?

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yeah. I get all that to chime in but our athletic trainers serves several functions for us and it’s really a great team that we put together. One is the work in the clinics with us, so when we see kids in clinic they’ll put on their braces and cast and they’ll deliver home exercise programs for kids who are rehabbing at home.

10:04

And then on the rehab side of things, we have sort of a fast-track rehab program called FREHAB, Functional Rehab. And we have kids that come through that program who need a quicker phase, sports specific type rehab. And then we also have athletic trainers who work in the school settings as well.

Dr. Mike Patrick: That is great. Now, Kerry, if you could explain really, why is summer conditioning important for athletes who are going to be competing in the fall?

Kerry Waple: There’s an old adage that I learned years ago for injury prevention and it’s called, “You get in shape to practice, you don’t practice to get in shape.” So the kids and the parents that actually understand that and take that to heart, they’ll do the types of conditioning over the summer to actually get ready for the start of the season, and that helps eliminate, gets the kinks out so to speak.

We get into things like trying to have them wear the appropriate shoes as they’re training so that the blisters that happen don’t happen in the middle of their practice. They’ve kind of gotten their body and their feet and what have you already to go. So that’s an important step in trying to prevent some of the injuries that we commonly see once anybody sees in the practice season starts.

11:18

Dr. Mike Patrick: It’s funny because from the kids’ point of view, they want to improve their performance. I mean, their whole idea of conditioning and getting ready in the summer so that they can be a better player in the fall. But really, from your point of view, I mean obviously that’s important, but the injury prevention is really the key, isn’t it?

Kerry Waple: That’s just a real common time of the season where we see the injuries happen and that they’re most prevalent then. And some basic things that we can do to prevent those are very easy for these kids to do at home. So, I don’t know how in-depth it may get, but a lot of times we work on core strengthening and flexibility and some more endurance type running prior to the season because that’s really what’s going to make the basis of their athleticism as they progress.

12:09

Dr. Mike Patrick: Let’s talk about football first. What are some of the common injuries that football players face and what can they do during the summer to improve their performance and reduce injury risk?

Dr. Tom Pommering: So since football is a contact sport, a lot of the injuries are contact related in terms of broken bones, knee injuries, ankle injuries. The concussions are another thing that we see a lot of in football. But I think in terms of conditioning, we talk about a lot of the traditional muscular skeletal injuries, but one of the important things that the athletes need to do this time of year is to get acclimated to the heat.

And certainly a week like this in Columbus, Ohio we can appreciate how hot it is just walking to our cars. So just getting outside, doing some of the things that Kerry talked about in terms of some of the pre-season, some of the training they do on their own, the running.

They should try to be outside when they do some of these so they can get heat acclimated so that when their practice start in there three to four-hour practices in case of football, in this example there are two a day so they might practice a few hours in the morning and then another two to three hours in the evening.

13:11

And probably for that type of setting, just being used to the heat and adapting your cooling mechanisms and knowing how to hydrate yourself in those conditions is really important, so I want to mention that.

Dr. Mike Patrick: So in terms of acclimating yourself to the climate, that’s important. Flexibility, obviously, is important. The core muscle training and then aerobic type stuff. All those things are really important for football.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Exactly. And the coaches are, especially around Central Ohio where we’re pretty football crazy here in this part of the State and all over Ohio really, but the coaches often will give these kids a plan to work on throughout the year and they will be less involved until they can officially meet.

So it’s really kind of up to the kids and their team captains and their seniors and leaders of the team to make sure kids are showing up and doing some strength training and some running and some stretching and things like that to get them ready for the hard practices that are going to happen in August.

14:06

Dr. Mike Patrick: So for the football players it’s sort of, at least starting in August or so, it’s really already a program that’s put into place to make sure that those kinds of things are happening. But other fall sports, that’s not necessarily the case, is it?

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes, I think that’s true. It depends on the school and the teams. Like for example, cross-country. A lot of times the cross-country coaches will give the kids running programs over the summer and it’s probably a little bit more up to them individually how to follow these programs. There might be some captain’s practices.

But certainly, sports like football and soccer where they need to show up and a lot of times for soccer, another example, there’s a physical fitness test on day one of practice, the official practice. You have to be able to run a mile or two miles under certain time. So there is some preparation that’s important for these kids to try to do.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Cheerleading, I know sometimes is not the first thing that really comes to mind in terms of sport, but we see a lot of injuries in cheerleaders. And I suspect if they did a better job of training and conditioning in the summer, what do you think, Kerry, about cheerleading?

15:11

Kerry Waple: Cheerleading is tough. There’s a lot of strong competitive cheer dance programs throughout Central Ohio and we do a lot of work with these kids as we see post-injury in the clinic. But pre-injury, people have to realize that cheerleading is like gymnastics without a mat. So these kids are really trying to accomplish things with their body with, a lot of times, very little support.

And whether you’re a base, trying to do kind of the stunting type cheerleading thing, that takes a lot strength, a lot of core control, a lot of balance. So those are things that again can be worked on. Cheerleading, at least in the competitive world, it goes year-round and that translates into the different seasons that they work in the school. But definitely strength as far as core and balance are part of the key components of that.

16:03

Dr. Mike Patrick: Before I came back here at the Nationwide Children’s, I was working in an urgent care network in Orlando and they had several cheer competitions that came through Disney’s wide world of sports. I can’t tell you how many cheerleader injuries that we saw in our urgent care system would come in and need x-rays because their spotter didn’t spot. So it can be dangerous.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Absolutely. I think as we talk about all these physical preparedness that we are advising our athletes to do over the summer season, it’s also important to kind of mention there needs to be a balance in their sport seasons. So we definitely want kids to have some downtime and some breaks between seasons or you know, take that family vacation that seems to be vanishing now for young athletes especially the year-round sports.

But it’s actually good to have some downtime either between seasons or even within a conditioning period. Have some time for your muscles and your bones to adapt and heal and to grow so that you can keep training. So I think that’s important to mention as well.

17:03

Dr. Mike Patrick: It does seem like there’s a lot of kids now that one sports flows into the next one, flows into the next one. Sometimes you think it’s best to pick which one you like.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes. I think, definitely, sometimes you do have to pick which one you like or not pick two sports in the same season. We still see a lot of that. But I think it’s just important to have some days off where you can actually rest and recover. I think also from a psychological standpoint to prevent burn out is to have even some weeks off in between seasons when you can kind of actually relax and get your rest and get recharged for the next season or the next sport.

Dr. Mike Patrick: I’m sure you’re very familiar with this. You get kids and you tell them that they have to sit out for a couple of weeks and they’re really emotionally distraught about this.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Oh absolutely. I think people sometimes might underestimate or bluff how affected they are by this, and especially for a big injury. A lot of the injuries we see don’t require a lot of time off and what we try to do is we kind of push the envelope and what can we let you keep doing safely while we heal your injury.

18:08

For some athletes that’s just not possible. They need complete downtime and rehab time and it’s tough on them because it takes them away from their social circles, psychologically, it’s important for them, it’s a part of their identity, and that’s a whole other issue.

Dr. Mike Patrick: What about some of the other sports in the fall such as volleyball, tennis, those kind of things? What kind of things should those players be doing in the summer?

Kerry Waple: I think one of the things that when it comes to sports like volleyball and cheerleading a little bit there as well, but a lot of these sports there’s jumping involved, jumping and landing. The important component here, especially for girls, is there’s a lot of things that can happen, significant injuries to knees and young girls as they grow.

So we really preach mechanics. When it comes to jumping and landing and the proper knee position or the foot position, and then that takes practice just like anything else to have the right muscle memory and to get good at.

19:08

So those are some of the things that we put in, that we recommend through the summer is to get involved in injury prevention, ACL type programs, knee injury prevention programs where you can get the specialized type of training prior to a season or in between seasons and things like that.

But that’s critical for even the soccers and the basketballs. Even though basketball’s not really, you know, that they may have a fall season once into the winter, but these kids are playing through AAU and a variety of different venues throughout the summer.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Is this something that student athletes can do? Can they make a consultation type appointment with your clinic if they want to try to come up with an individualized conditioning program?

Kerry Waple: We’ve got a variety of options available. That’s one. We’ve got classes that folks can join small group classes or we can do one-on-one with these kids, kind of a “personal training” type approach. And we do that quite often because we certainly see the kids once they’re hurt, but if there is something we can do on the front end to prevent this, that makes everybody happy.

20:12

Dr. Mike Patrick: Yes, absolutely. Now, what about insurance? Does third party payers, will they pay for that kind of thing or it depends kind of on the insurance itself?

Kerry Waple: The physical therapy that’s provided by the physical therapist, and then the function and rehabilitation that’s provided by the athletic trainers, those are all submitted through insurance companies for payment. The specific classes, those are all fee-based programs because typically, those aren’t considered medically reimbursed.

Dr. Mike Patrick: So there’s not one-on-one and there’s not a physical exam that goes along with it?

Kerry Waple: Right. There’s not a physical exam, there’s not a diagnosis. It’s not really in response to an injury.

Dr. Tom Pommering: We still think it’s really important. Prevention is so important, almost as important as the treatment part of what we deliver. So we have group classes to try to keep the cost down for stuff like that, or individual sessions if somebody wants a one-on-one.

21:01

Dr. Mike Patrick: Do you go to the schools to do those classes or are those pretty much done in your clinic space?

Kerry Waple: Actually, both. We always have them in-house throughout the year and a little bit more heavy in the summer. And then as schools or teams request that, we can certainly take that on the road. We’ve done that throughout Central Ohio in many occasions. And what’s nice about that is we can kind of utilize the equipment that they have, their facility that they’re going to be, eventually, have the most access to.

Dr. Mike Patrick: And we’ll put a link in the show notes to the Sports Medicine Program here at Nationwide Children’s so people would be able to get into contact with you if they are interested in one of these kind of classes or if there are a school, if their coach or an administrator and they’re interested in partnering with you just with the contact information for you. So we’ll have that.

Let me ask you. We talked about conditioning and aerobics and core training and balance. There’s a lot of the different things that are all going on here with summer conditioning. What kind of risks are involved with the condition itself? What do kids have to watch out for?

22:09

Dr. Tom Pommering: Well I think the big thing is if you’ve had a period of inactivity is to start out slow and progress in a reasonable fashion. I think a lot of times, kids sort of live in the moment and it’s the last minute, it’s a week before. Their practice start and they try to do three months of training in one week.

So, we will see a lot of overused injuries, things like stress fractures and tendonitis, things like that that occur in the first couple of weeks of their training because they’ve just went too much too fast. So I think they really need to have a plan, try to stick to it. We’re not all perfect with that, but be reasonable with the amount of training that you do.

Dr. Mike Patrick: There’s a lot of kids I would think who aren’t necessarily your high performance athletes who think they want to get involved in a sport and their parents are encouraging them to get involved in a sport. And they start conditioning and they have one of these overused injuries and then they just quit.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes, I think that’s common and it’s unfortunate because you never know if they quit and never start again, you may not ever know if they would’ve enjoyed it or not.

23:07

So, most of the time, these injuries, if we can see them soon early in their injury and not a chronic overused injury that’s been around for months and months, we can usually get that taken care of quicker. It’s a lot more fun to play when you’re not hurt than when you’re hurt.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Right. There’s also a lot of student athletes who aren’t close to us here at Nationwide Children’s, and they may not be close to any pediatric sports medicine program. Is there a resource or a way for coaches and pediatricians to come up with conditioning plans that may be, it’s not their expertise but it’s not necessarily practical to send them two hours to go to a facility. I mean, is there something online, a resource pool of some sort?

Dr. Tom Pommering: That would be nice if there was that I know of. Kerry and I are looking at each other like, “Hey, that’s a great idea Mike.” But I think the athlete’s first resource are their coaches and I think some of the coaches are a little bit more sophisticated with this than others. And the other really great resource is their athletic trainer, if they’re lucky enough to have one, at the school.

24:13

And that’s really someone who has medical training, not only in injury treatment, but in prevention. And I think, the schools that do the best with this, their coaches have a great relationship with their athletic training staff and they can sort of modify and make their programs around, you know, what are they saying about ACL prevention, for example, which we’ll be incorporating in our training.

Dr. Mike Patrick: We actually have a fair number of primary care docs who listen to the program and some of them are out in rural areas. And even rural areas, for the most part, have certified athletic trainers that are part of the community and are working with the schools.

So Kerry, if you were an athletic trainer working with a school and a pediatrician called you and said, “Hey, can I have some athletes? I don’t know what to do.” Is that something you’d be, not you personally, but is it realistic to think that that’s a resource that doctors could use?

25:01

Kerry Waple: It’s absolutely a resource. The challenge, unfortunately, in Ohio, and we’re not different from the rest of the country, there’s only about 50% of the high schools in Ohio even have an athletic trainer, which is a disservice really in our mind too – the health and well being of those students as student athletes and the community at large.

But if you an athletic trainer in a high school and a local pediatrician calls and needs some of these resources, a lot of time these kids are going to be working in that same school system. So they may very well have access to that person. There’s programs that will do to educate kids when it comes proper lifting technique at certain times of the year.

The folks that are in rural settings, they wear a lot of hats because there aren’t a lot of people that these folks can go to. So, we’re all educated on how to design the proper program to specially age appropriate for somebody’s kids that have open growth plates. But yes, that’s probably the best place to start, and then there’s some things in our website as well, but that’s great resource.

26:05

Dr. Mike Patrick: Do you think that the lack of an athletic trainer at lots of schools, is that a funding issue or is it a manpower, were not training enough athletic trainers? What do you think? Or a combination of those things?

Kerry Waple: It’s almost exclusively, in my experience, a financial issue. The National Athletic Trainers Association, the organizing body for this whole profession, and our Board of Certification, they’re doing the best they can to promote what the secondary school athletic trainer can do and resources in the community that can fund a position like this.

But if you have an athletic department and you have coaches and you have kids playing, it seems ludicrous not to have somebody there that can act independently without any bias on their behalf. So it’s a challenge.

Dr. Mike Patrick: It really should be looked at as required equipment.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes.

Kerry Waple: Yes, right.

Dr. Mike Patrick: It’s an investment and a purchase and something that’s really important. So any school officials out there now listening to us talk, if you don’t have an athletic trainer, you should.

27:04

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes. Talk to your Boards and get them to buy-in to the idea because we can help you find one.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Yes, right. That is great. All right. So, I really appreciate both of you coming by. Is there anything summer conditioning training related that we didn’t cover that we should have?

Dr. Tom Pommering: I guess the only other thing I would add is I think parents know their kids better than anybody and I think you’re the first line of kind of deciding if there’s something going on with your student athlete, whether it’s a physical injury or if there’s a personality conflict with the coach or other player, and from there… Especially I think, Mike, when you talked about areas that don’t have access to a sports medicine facility.

Get to know your kids. Know what’s going on and get them in to see their primary care physicians who also know them really well. And I think if you’re suspicious, don’t wait until the problem gets worse. Act on it.

Dr. Mike Patrick: And a lot of kids are worried about telling their parents and their coaches if they’re experiencing discomfort because they think, “Oh that means I’m going to be taken out of the game and can’t compete anymore.”

28:06

Dr. Tom Pommering: I can’t tell you how many times when we send a letter or some kind of correspondence back to the coach and the athletic trainer I always tell the kids, “Don’t worry. I’ll dive on the bomb for you on this one.”

Dr. Mike Patrick: Well, we really appreciate you coming by. And I want to remind everyone out there getting the show notes over at pediacast.org we’ll have a link to the Sports Medicine Program here at Nationwide Children’s. The site there has all the services that they provide. It also has a list of common conditions that student athletes can face and come across, so you can educate yourself and learn more about those conditions.

It has conditioning and injury prevention tips, it has some articles on sports medicine research, and ideas for how schools and organizations can partner with Sports Medicine at Nationwide Children’s. There’s also videos and e-newsletter you can sign up for. So I really think, having really look at the website, it is a premiere online destination for everything, it’s Sports Medicine.

29:01

Dr. Tom Pommering: Yes. We want it to be a great resource for anybody who came and looked at the site.

Dr. Mike Patrick: And we’ll have a link to that. So pediacast.org in the show notes. All right, so before we wrap up, one thing that we do here at PediaCast – and this is new since the last time you were on the show – is we really try to encourage families to do things together and not just be in front of computers and TV screens. You were talking about family vacations being important, definitely important.

And so, what we’re asking everyone now is if you remember from when you were on a kid or now with your own kids, board games. And it’s just one of the things that we like to do in our house. Tom, what was one of your favorite games or is your favorite board game?

Dr. Tom Pommering: Let’s see. My brother and I, we played Monopoly for hours and I think my parents probably love that.

Dr. Mike Patrick: It is so easy to make that game last hours.

Dr. Tom Pommering: Absolutely. And to play it competitively.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Yes. You know, Dr. Kati Koranyi, she’s an infectious disease specialist here, and she was talking about how their family loves Monopoly. But they have a way that they pass out all of the cards ahead of time so they can just start wheeling and dealing right away. You know, life shuffle them all up and pass it on.

30:07

Dr. Tom Pommering: Get right down to it.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Yes, right. Exactly. So what about you Kerry? Board games, what do you think?

Kerry Waple: Well, you know what, we didn’t play a lot of board games. I wish I did play Monopoly because I think I’d probably deal a little bit better with my finances at this stage of the game. But we played a lot of cards. So, Rami and Crazy Eights and all those games. Uno, that was…

Dr. Mike Patrick: Canasta?

Kerry Waple: That’s not one I’ve heard of.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Canasta, yes, my grandma used to play that one. She taught us. It’s an old Mexican game.

Kerry Waple: Moving to Central Ohio I know euchre’s pretty big around here, so I had to learn that to where my, you know to be a true Buckeye.

Dr. Mike Patrick: Great. All right, so we have card games and Monopoly. So we’ll add that to our list and encourage parents out there to play games with their kids. All right. Well, thanks again to Dr. Tom Pommering and Kerry Waple for joining us, and of course thanks to all of you, listeners, who make PediaCast possible.

I want to remind you that if you have left an iTunes review, that’s always helpful. And I know a lot of you found PediaCast because you were surfing around iTunes and came across this and read some of the reviews. It only takes about 30 seconds to a minute to leave as a review on iTunes. So if you haven’t done that, please do.

31:15

Also mention us in your blogs, on Facebook, and your tweets and tell you primary care doctor about PediaCast so that they can share this resource with their other patients and families.

Again, if there’s a topic that you would like to hear about just go over to pediacast.org and click on the contact link. You can also email pediacast@gmail.com or call the voice line at 347-404-KIDS. That’s 347-404-K-I-D-S.

And until next time, this is Dr. Mike saying stay safe, stay healthy and stay involved with your kids. So long everybody.

[Music]

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Announcer 2: This program is a production of Nationwide Children’s. Thanks for listening! We’ll see you next time on PediaCast.

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