The Importance of Standardized Injury Reporting in Dance

Abstract

Preventing dance injuries is the fundamental aim of healthcare providers, educators, and scientists interested in the health and well-being of dancers. Since its inception in 1990, the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science has promoted community-wide efforts to standarized measurements associated with dancer health, including the measurement of injuries themselves. To effectively reduce dance injury rates, a consistent and systematic way of documenting injury oc-currence is necessary. Without uniformly kept records showing the type, nature, frequency, and circumstances surrounding dance injury events, it is difficult—if not impossible—to distinguish between variables that influence their occurrence. Injury reporting systems have been used by the sports community for the past three decades and have provided athletes and the persons who train them and care for their health a better understanding of risk variables associated with injury onset. It is only by similar discipline that the dance medicine community can become truly effective at reducing its injury rates. The aim of this paper is introduce infor-mation about the purpose and process of injury reporting and to describe how implementing privacy protected injury reporting systems that monitor dancers in their environment can reliably capture valuable information associated with the conditions surrounding injury events and lead to more effective prevention and treatment strategies.