Concussions - Litigation On The Rise!

According to industry experts, concussions are set to be the next wave of significant negligence claims against schools and teachers. Currently somewhere between 20% and 50% of concussions in sports are not recognised nor reported. Basically, most people are flipping a coin and hoping for a good result. This is concerning and consequently a massive risk.
 
50% to 80% miss rate is something we can and must avoid. The reason being is that students who have an unrecognised concussion and continue to play or engage in further sports activities, are at a much higher risk of a second concussion, which can then lead to a far worse traumatic brain injury and has an extremely high potential for irreversible damage.
 
Since you as the teacher, coach, or activities director have a non-delegable duty of care for your students, you must ensure that you are properly assessing and reporting on head injuries or suspected concussions. Failure to do so, is just the start of the next tidal wave of claims against schools for negligence.
 
Having dealt with numerous concussions over the years as a teacher, we’ve always been mindful of this and are about to release an update to the Xcursion app with the CAT5 Berlin Consensus tool for recognising and recording potential concussions.
 
It’s important to protect both students from further injury and yourself from litigation. Record and report every potential concussion to make sure that every sport and activity is safe and enjoyable for everyone involved.
 
A really interesting resource on this is:
 
Malcolm Gladwell’s Podcast Episode ‘Burden of Proof’
 
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof
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