Determinants of Intention to Disclose Musculoskeletal Injury in Adolescent Athletes

Abstract

Context While research indicates the key to minimizing musculoskeletal injury impact, improving care, and mitigating long-term effects is to improve early injury care-seeking, little is known about barriers to early musculoskeletal injury disclosure and care seeking. Objective This study aimed to identify which determinants predicted sport-related musculoskeletal injury disclosure in adolescent athletes. Design Cross-Sectional Setting Online Survey Patients or Other participants Five-hundred-sixty-four adolescent athletes (58% male, age 15.81±1.8 years) Main Outcome Measure(s) Online survey exploring determinants such as age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, injury knowledge, attitudes, perceived social norms, and perceived behavioral control surrounding musculoskeletal injury disclosure, intention to disclosure musculoskeletal injury and actual behavior of disclosing musculoskeletal injury. Results Four-hundred-fifty-seven (80.2%) of the respondents reported having suffered at least one (mean=3.2 ± 2.2 range: 1–10) musculoskeletal injury related to sport. Respondents who endorsed having suffered a musculoskeletal injury endorsed not reporting or purposefully hiding 77% of their suspected musculoskeletal injuries. Several factors were determined to influence high intention to disclose MSK injury. Specifically, for each unit increase in total MSK injury knowledge (Exp(β) = 1.061, β = .054 P = 0.020, 95% CI = 1.031–1.221) and attitude (Exp(β) = 1.070, β = .064, P < 0.001, 95% CI = 1.027–1.115) score a 6% and 7% increase in likelihood of high intention to disclose a MSK injury was observed respectively. Moreover, for each unit increase in social norm score (Exp(β) = 1.178, β = .164, P < 0.001, 95% CI = 1.119–1.241) an % 18 increase in likelihood of high intention to disclose a MSK injury was observed. Conclusions Designing intervention geared towards increasing the knowledge of signs and symptoms of musculoskeletal injury, improving attitudes surrounding disclosure and better understanding the social context of disclosing musculoskeletal injuries could potentially improve musculoskeletal injury disclosure behavior and reduce the social and economic burden of musculoskeletal injury.