Week 1, Day 1

Welcome to the first day of your internship with Concussion Alliance! We are excited to work with you and to get to know you better. Thank you for joining us.

We are looking forward to helping you get up to speed on your concussion knowledge and then up and running on your projects this week. You’ll have concussion curriculum every day, and we’ll spend time on remote teamwork and shared learning. You’ll also start doing background research on your projects and learn about our process in preparation for writing for the newsletter this week.

Our first expert guest speaker is Dan Fogarty on Wednesday; Dan is a concussion patient and advocate, as well as a CA community member. Our second expert guest speaker is Dr. Elizabeth Sandel on Friday; Dr. Sandel was one of the first professionals to become sub-specialty certified in Brain Injury Medicine and is the author of our internship curriculum text Shaken Brain: The Science, Care, and Treatment of Concussion.

We’ll also be having a discussion on The 5th International Consensus on Concussion in Sport on Wednesday and a newsletter-writing workshop on Tuesday.

There are four Tasks to do today:

Knowledge Evaluation

• We’ve created a short (and far from comprehensive) Concussion Knowledge Evaluation for you to complete. This evaluation consists of 26 short questions and exists to help us build a better curriculum and give us some educational metrics for grant applications. We know that everyone is coming in with a different level of knowledge, and we wouldn’t have it any other way!

• Please start here before you go on to look at any of the curriculum today.

• Here is the link to the evaluation: https://forms.gle/n4VAfYezAQD3QFHi6

Project Interest Form

• We’ve compiled a list of 8 potential projects for this internship. Read through this project description document to get an idea of what each project would look like (the doc is also linked in the Google Form).

• Then fill out this Project Interest Form to give us an idea of what you’d like to work on. Projects will be assigned on Wednesday so you have time to sign up for a Project Start-Up Meeting on Thursday with Conor, Gigi, and Sam.

Practice Newsletter Synopsis

• We’ve picked two sets of source documents from previous newsletter synopses for you to write a practice synopsis with! You’ll be using your practice synopsis in the workshop tomorrow, so try to pick which of the two you want to write about and read them over today, so when you go to write it tomorrow it isn’t totally fresh.

• Check out the two options here, and sign up for which one you want to write about (only 4 slots for each one!)

  • Option 1:

    • https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/18/1048

    • https://news.umich.edu/more-youth-report-concussions-since-2016-u-m-study-shows/

  • Option 2:

    • https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/02/09/bjsports-2020-103274

    • https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/mar/23/pitchside-saliva-tests-could-be-used-to-diagnose-concussion

    • https://www.healio.com/news/neurology/20210325/qa-researchers-identify-concussion-biomarkers-in-saliva

  • Sign-Up Sheet

Social Hour Today

• Think of your two truths and a lie for our Two Truths and a Lie Social Hour this afternoon!

• Zoom link:

  • Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8428523914?pwd=dXA0TkRocTE2RjJHUzJGNGx6UEJzdz09

  • Meeting ID: 842 852 3914

  • Passcode: 094687

Work through this curriculum for today:

We’ve provided a group of educational resources below. We’ve listed them in an order that we hope will build on your understanding of concussions as you go through them.

1. Read Concussion Alliance’s Guidelines for Recovery page

2. Read the 5th Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport in preparation for our discussion this Wednesday.

   1. This consensus statement from 2016 is as close as the concussion space has to a current world paradigm. The Consensus In Sport Group (CISG) meets every four years to update this consensus statement, which includes sections on definitions, diagnostics, and treatments for concussion in sport. The 6th CISG meeting was originally supposed to take place in October 2020 but is currently scheduled for October 2022.

3. Read Overview: What is a concussion from the Concussion Awareness Training Tool (CATT). CATT is a Canadian resource addressing concussion recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and management. Read about them here.

4. Watch this video from the University of Calgary Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): Dr. Chris Giza on the biology of Concussion (the audio is a little low, so you may need to turn it up a decent amount).

5. Watch this short video on how neurons communicate.

Tutorials (Newsletter Prep)

• Watch the Julian Szieff Newsletter Science Writing Module, which focuses on reading, processing, and synopsizing research for newsletters.

Remote Work/Team Building

Watch these videos on remote work environments. I know you all have had plenty of experience working remotely over the last year, but these (very short) videos should be helpful in generating some intentionality with regards to building community in our remote environment (these videos should take no more than 10-15 minutes).

• https://vimeo.com/345991429: How to show appreciation to remote employees. Appreciation requires personal relationships.

• https://vimeo.com/258651733: The Declining Importance of Supervisor Appreciation for Millenials.

• https://vimeo.com/131688962: The Power of Appreciation From Both Managers and Peers

• https://vimeo.com/61070940: Why employees don’t want to be appreciated just for what they do.