Omaha Nighthawks' Orthopaedic Surgeon, Dr. Charles Burt on Sports Medicine

Nebraska Orthopaedic Hospital Surgeon and Head of Sports Medicine for the Omaha Nighthawks, Dr. Charles Burt, discusses the ins and outs of Sports Medicine, including the makeup of the Omaha Nighthawks Sports Medicine team, why he does it and how it's relevant to everyone, not just professional athletes.

Transcript:
"For me it was just, I was an athlete, and like about two thirds of these guys who do what I do, we're just a bunch of ex-athletes who hurt ourselves and thought it was cool to figure out how to fix people. The role of the team physician for the Omaha Nighthawks is basically to coordinate the care for all the Nighthawk players. One of the most important things we do with the pre-participation physicals is make sure from an orthopaedic stand point is to make sure all these players have healthy bones and joints. Many of these people have had significant injuries in the past. They've played a very high level of football and our job is to make sure that they are truly ready to go out and compete and then along with that we do a lot of internal medicine, family physicians, who make sure from an overall medical standpoint make sure that they don't have any other medical problems that would limit their ability to compete at the highest level. I spend time every week in the training room. I evaluate all the players that have been injured after the training staff have done an initial evaluation. Some of those players require more urgent care. They require x-rays, MRIs, and such as that. We do see significant injuries, sometimes season ending injuries, fortunately most injuries can be cared for by examination in the training room, care and rehabilitation by the training staff, and then we can get the players back out on the field. The Omaha Nighthawks actually have a very extensive medical team that can take care of them. It includes myself, an orthopaedic surgeon specially trained in sports medicine. One of my partners, Dr. Scott Reynolds, who's also specially trained in sports medicine, assists me. We have a head internal medicine team physician, Dr. Monny Matthews, who's very experienced and has cared for some of the local colleges and has the most experience really of anyone in the region. Then the person in the trenches with the nighthawks every day is John Burrell, our head athletic trainer and he has two assistant athletic trainers who're very much involved in the day to day care of the athletes. The Omaha Nighthawks are very fortunate to have a trainer with the experience of John Burrell. Myself, and my partners who help take care of the Omaha Nighthawks, are all orthopaedic surgeons but also are specially trained in sports medicine which means we did additional training specific to sports injuries, surgical and non-surgical care of sports injuries. And then we're also specialty board certified in sports medicine which means after all that training we've proven that we've continued to take care of athletes and we've stayed up with the latest treatments and are actively involved in the care athletes from a professional level all the way down to recreational athletes. There's no question that Sports Medicine isn't just for the Professional athlete. Life really is a sport. The vast majority of people that we take care of are people living their lives. Whether you're a recreational athlete, a varsity high school athlete, a college athlete or a professional athlete I think it's very important that if you sustain some sort of injury, that you seek care from a qualified sports medicine, specially trained orthopaedic surgeon."

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Omaha Nighthawks
• Nebraska Orthopaedic Hospital
• Sports Medicine
• Athletic injuries
• sports
• Nighthawks All Access
• Orthopaedic Medicine
• sports and life