In Rio Rancho, N.M., Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation team members from The University of New Mexico Sandoval Regional Medical Center — A Campus of UNM Hospital (SRMC) are on the lookout for injuries at high school football games, and they help athletes in other sports, too.
SRMC orthopaedic surgeon Christopher Shultz, MD, spends his Friday nights volunteering on the sidelines of football games in Rio Rancho, scanning for injuries on the field.
“The ideal night for us is that we just hang out and watch a good game, but we’re there ready to take care of anything and everything,” Shultz said.
He coordinates with athletic trainers — including SRMC’s clinical athletic trainer, Ariana Jaramillo — and emergency medical services personnel to provide medical support to injured players, including concussion monitoring, he said.
“The main thing we’re providing is another set of eyes to look out for injuries, and we also help make some diagnoses and assessments, and even recommendations on safety of return to play and next steps,” Shultz said. “Then we shepherd them through the process if we have to take an athlete out or get them checked out later.”
As the evening sun set over a recent football game at V. Sue Cleveland High School, the SRMC team jumped into action when a player was injured.
The player’s mother, who was in the stands, watched it all happen.
“I noticed that he had flipped,” she said, referring to the hit her son took on the field. “I didn’t know that it was that serious until he got out of the game, and he was limping a little bit.”
Shultz also saw the injury unfold, coordinated with Jaramillo and began examining the injured player on a table on the sideline. Within moments, Shultz was explaining the situation to the player’s parents and setting up an office appointment at SRMC for the following Monday.
Part of our big thing we do is more like helping patients and student athletes navigate the system. And so, whether or not you’re a patient we’ve seen before, we have the ability to share information that explains the care process, with the ultimate goal of keeping these kids safe and getting them back to playing the sports that they love.
- Christopher Shultz, MD, Orthopaedic Surgeon, UNM SRMC
The player’s mother said she was relieved after talking to Shultz at the game.
“I felt so much better,” she said. “Just because he’s a physician, and he knows what he’s doing, and seeing him the way he was working on my son while I was in the stands — it was really amazing.”
Her son later went to SRMC to get an MRI of his injury — an 8 p.m. appointment. Shultz called her half an hour later, she said, with good news: There was no serious injury, and her son was going to be OK.
“I felt like we weren’t put aside,” she said. “I felt like Dr. Shultz really put the time in to give us a call to really look at stuff, and I just feel like he’s an amazing person.”
Shultz said his work on the sidelines is an important part of the UNM Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation team’s mission. They cover football games in Rio Rancho, Albuquerque and surrounding areas, and they do more than just provide medical care, he said.
“Part of our big thing we do is more like helping patients and student athletes navigate the system,” he said. “And so, whether or not you’re a patient we’ve seen before, we have the ability to share information that explains the care process, with the ultimate goal of keeping these kids safe and getting them back to playing the sports that they love.”
Shultz’s work in Sandoval County extends beyond football, with athletes from sports such as soccer, basketball and volleyball coming to the football sideline to see him, he said.
Brooke Clements, a junior at Cleveland High School who plays volleyball, came to Shultz for a sideline consult. About a year ago, she injured her knee during a volleyball game, and an athletic trainer at her school connected her with Shultz. Clements went to see Shultz before a football game, where he diagnosed her with a tear in her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).
Before seeing him, she said she had been uncertain about what would happen with her knee, but Shultz explained things well. “He was really good about it,” she said, adding that she felt better after Shultz explained each part of the surgery she would need.
Shultz later performed a surgical ACL repair, and Clements continued with rehabilitation afterward. Now, about a year post-surgery, she said her knee feels much better, although she hasn’t gone back to playing volleyball quite yet.
“It feels great,” she said. “I made volleyball my whole life. I always say I eat, sleep and breathe volleyball. I really miss just playing it. And I think it feels so good to know that I can get out there and play it again.”
Clements’ mother, Tiffani Clements, said she hopes other families can have the same experience as her family did at SRMC.
“I just hope that their experience is as seamless and virtually painless like ours was, and that they feel cared for and valued, and they’re being cheered on,” Tiffani Clements said. “Because I feel like that’s what Brooke got from Dr. Shultz and the team that was working with her — getting her strength back, getting her mobility.”
Brooke Clements said that her injury created an opportunity to become an assistant volleyball coach in the community and a volleyball team manager at Cleveland High School. And, from spending time under the care of sports rehab professionals while injured, she discovered that she wants to study physical therapy at UNM.
She went from thinking her injury was “the end of the world” to learning and growing from it, she said.
“Just the opportunity to learn that I’m interested in physical therapy, and then to learn that I love coaching and I’d like to pursue all of that later on, I think it allowed me to just kind of realize this happened for a reason, and I’m really happy with how it turned out,” she said.
Banner Image: Shultz, second from right, along with a physician resident and two medical students from the UNM School of Medicine, watches for injuries on the field at a Friday night football game at V. Sue Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho, N.M. Photo Credit: Jeff Sargent
Thumbnail Image: Shultz at a Friday night football game at V. Sue Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho, N.M. Photo Credit: Jeff Sargent
