Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Many trauma patients suffer multiple injuries that require complex care and can lead to lifelong disabilities and difficulties with daily living. Among these, mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or concussion is common and can result in lingering symptoms (e.g., headache, dizziness, cognitive difficulties etc.). For trauma patients, mTBI/concussion is often overlooked during first encounter due to distracting or life-threatening injuries. In the post-acute stage, it can then be difficult to determine if the symptoms are from a missed head injury or other complications from the trauma (e.g., medication side effects, pain, etc.). Unfortunately, there are no clear guidelines or commonly agreed upon screening tools to help identify mTBI/concussion in rehabilitation settings. As a result, there is a suspected high number of missed cases of mTBI/concussion, which can negatively impact physical rehabilitation and long-term recovery. To address these issues, our team is proposing to organize an online national virtual planning meeting where we will work with brain injury, rehabilitation and health system experts, as well as people with mTBI/concussion, to obtain agreement on the best way to identify mTBI/concussion in post-acute rehabilitation settings. We will also work to identify potential lines of research to better understand what healthcare providers need to identify mTBI/concussion and work with the traumatic brain injury community to learn what important issues are affecting their health and wellbeing.