High school football is back in Mississippi, and the sports medicine team at the University of Mississippi Medical Center will be prepared for injuries.
Dr. Derrick Burgess, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at the hospital, confirmed that there will be a walk-in clinic on Friday nights throughout the football season. The injury clinic is now located at UMMC’s new Colony Park South campus in Ridgeland. Hours of operation run from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, with nighttime hours from 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., or until the last student-athlete is seen.
The clinic allows student-athletes with injuries that don’t require emergency care to be evaluated by sports medicine professionals at a convenient time. It also helps save parents a trip to the emergency room with their child.
“We do an initial evaluation. If they need to have any type of imaging, like X-rays, we can get them done then,” Burgess said on Good Things with Rebecca Turner. “If they need to have an MRI or CT done, we can plan for that later. But they’re coming in to be evaluated to get an early diagnosis, so that we can start treatment right away. And they’re also coming in so that they can avoid going to the emergency room on a Friday night.”
Burgess added that the Friday night clinic, which will be open weekly from Aug. 28 until Black Friday, is not reserved for just football players. Cheerleaders, band members, and other related student-athletes will be assessed if they are injured.
“We know that there are a lot of athletes outside of football. But football gets a lot of attention because you have 75 to 100 people on one field, so it’s very demanding. It’s a contact sport, so we expect injuries in larger volumes.”
Burgess noted that the most common injuries his team sees on Friday nights are bruises and sprains, along with fractures, ligament injuries, and various dislocations. If a student-athlete comes in with an injury that requires emergency care, injury clinic personnel will encourage parents to go to the emergency room at a nearby hospital.
“We see pretty much any injury that will go to the emergency room unless it’s an open fracture or something where you have to be stabilized that needs to go to the emergency room. Anything you can pretty much walk in with, we’ll evaluate them when they get to the clinic.”
High school football officially kicked off at the MAIS level on Aug. 14 and will ramp up in the coming weeks. Mississippi is still experiencing a summer heat wave. With that in mind, Burgess and other healthcare professionals urge student-athletes, coaches, and even spectators to stay hydrated.