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Table 5 Factors influencing injury surveillance practices: themes and supporting quotes

From: Implementing injury surveillance systems alongside injury prevention programs: evaluation of an online surveillance system in a community setting

Themes and key facilitators and barriers

Supporting quotes

1. Personal factors

 Facilitators

‘I mean, looking after upwards of sort of 70 people it’s sort of hard to keep track of a lot of the injuries… and if that person has followed up with the advice that you’d given them or if they went and got the referral. And so, it was really to just sort of check up with people. Which is yeah, really handy. Sort of … keeping track of everyone.’

  Belief in the importance of injury surveillance

  Injury surveillance as part of sports trainer’s role

‘Oh look, I suppose I’m a little bit different to a traditional football trainer. I probably don’t meet the mould…. And I’m just sort of hungry for those types of processes. Where I can monitor players and I understand that you know, it does work.’

 Barriers

  Lack of importance placed on injury surveillance

‘I mean, we know who the people with the repeat offenders are anyway. You don’t really need a stat saying that.’

2. Socio-contextual factors

 Facilitators

  Association with FootyFirst

‘So, we were trying to use them [the surveillance system and the training program]… working in conjunction with each other so we could sort of see the benefits of the FootyFirst programme.’

 Barriers

  Lack of/transience of staff

‘Look, it was probably not enough. It was really all that we had. With the resources that we had available. And staff. Sort of up until this year and last year we really haven’t had the specialists on board … So, we’ve sort of had a limited knowledge base that we can work with.’

  Underreporting of injuries

‘There’s a photo on Facebook. Soccer players pretend to be hurt, football players pretend they’re not.’

  Lack of support/leadership

‘Yeah, I think that would get more clubs involved as well. If [the league] sort of pushed it a bit more. And even talking to the actual… the clubs over a whole. So, coaching staff and everything. As well as the trainers. So, that everyone’s aware of it. And everyone will sort of talk about it more.’

‘Because I mean, if you’ve got the support of the league and SMA and the club then usually there’s no problem.’

3. System factors

 Facilitators

  Ease of use

‘Well, like I said I’m not the greatest on computers and I seem to… I got through it. So, I think if I can get through it you’ve pretty much got… you’ll cover most people.’

 Barriers

  Time taken to upload injuries

‘It takes two seconds to write it down with a pen. It took about five minutes to enter one injury in. … and when you have… you know, when you have ten or so injuries to record. Yeah, it took a while.’

  Technical issues

‘And then yeah, after that one time when it didn’t really work for I don’t know why it wouldn’t. But it wasn’t really saving data at all. So, after that I did keep it in a book for probably about four or five weeks.’

  Data requirements

‘You should probably try and [cut] it down so not so many pages have to be clicked through….Because you do have to go through a few pages. And other things that you’ve almost got to wait for the feedback to be able to put that information in properly. You know, you’re not sure if he’s torn that ligament.’

  Adjusting to a new system

‘I’m happy to do that paperwork because generally when I do my notes, it’s during the game…. But then afterwards yeah, it’s finding that time ….I suppose that probably just didn’t work for me because I was new at it and I hadn’t mastered the system yet.’