Latest Blog

COVID-19 Reflections from a Sports Medicine Perspective

By Daniel Clearfield, DO, MS, FAOASM | May 19, 2020 | General Sports Medicine | | 0 Comments

I write this post in the middle of May 2020, it has been an eventful year to say the least. 2020, a new decade and it seemed like there were endless possibilities. Nobody could have predicted what this year was going to be like, and who knows what the years coming are going to be like. Is it ever going to be normal again?

At the beginning of March I was excited to be joining Team USA Wrestling for the 2020 Pan-American Championships in Ottawa, Canada. Cases of coronavirus were starting to gain notice in the United States at that time, but most of it was happening overseas. I had been monitoring the activity in China and Italy, and I had been communicating with our national team about safety precautions and travel. I remember I grabbed a stack of masks for myself and the team as I traveled out there. I had a mask I wore on the plane, and I recall looking around and only a handful of people had a mask on themselves. I was diligent, keeping clean with sanitary wipes, using hand sanitizer, washing my hands for a full 20 seconds, keeping my face covered with a mask; I did not want to be the one responsible to get anyone else sick, or get sick myself. I remember taking great pride in seeing how engaged the wrestling team was with following my recommendations. One of the Greco Roman wrestlers would ask to borrow my hand sanitizer and go around to his teammates and coaches offering them a splash of sanitizer in their hands before and after practice, as well as at meals. I remember wondering if there were going to be any issues coming back from Canada, as we were there for a week. Fortunately traveling back was uneventful for myself and the rest of the team.

The week I returned, I started seeing more travel restrictions, more businesses starting to take precautions. It was at this time we started seeing sports shutting down, with the NBA leading the way after players tested positive for COVID-19. I was scheduled to work the National Wrestling Collegiate Association (NWCA) National Championships that following weekend, and I remember thinking, “is this event even going to happen?” I kept close contact with the event coordinator, he assured me that they were going to continue unless they were told otherwise. I had tried to call the county health department, but I wasn’t able to get through with anyone to discuss this. The event went on as planned, some teams did not make the trip. We continued to wear masks and gloves during the event, and use lots of hand sanitizer. The wrestlers and the referees were not shaking hands before and after their matches, but it was still going on. I remember saying to a referee, “this is probably the last organized sporting event being held in the country right now.”

Just after this event completed, everything started going on lockdown. We started seeing more cases in America, the extreme cases in New York started to build up and overwhelm their medical resources. Sports were no longer a luxury, as well as many of our other leisurely and routine activities.

I did not feel safe seeing patients in my office routinely. Fortunately I was already equipped to do telehealth, so I began to market this to my patients, that I could see them via video consultation. It was not the best way for me to evaluate injuries for sports medicine, as it is a very hands-on practice, but it still allowed me to provide access to my patients. It allowed me to keep myself and my patients safer, which gave me good peace of mind. In the month of April I only went in to see more urgent to emergent cases, but definitely not enough to sustain my practice.

Moving into May we started seeing some restrictions lifted, people starting to go back to work, people starting to attempt to go back to normal…but it’s not normal. Some people are acting like nothing happened, but the disease is still out there, it’s still very dangerous, and I fear that we have not seen the last of it.

So what does the future hold?
What is the future of sports?
What about the sports that I enjoy covering the most, contact sports like wrestling and judo?
What is the future of my practice and sports medicine?

I don’t have an answer, but I have to have optimism that things will get better. Will they get back to exactly as they were before? I don’t think things will ever be exactly the same. I think we are going to be more careful, I hope and pray we will be more careful. I hope that we will be more hygienic, I hope we will be more respectful of our health and wellness, take better care of ourselves, and take better care of others.

While we have seen plenty of bad things come out of this disease, I have also seen it bring out some of the best in people. I’ve seen people become more active again, I’ve seen people engage with their families better. I’ve seen people value their lives more than their work, which was not the case prior to this.

Life will go on, we will adjust, adapt, and become stronger for it. 2020 may have started off extremely harsh, but I am optimistic that we are going to finish this year strong, and with an appreciation for our lives and well-being greater than we have ever appreciated it before.