If a player goes down on the ice during an International Ice Hockey Federation’s Women’s World Championship game at the Adirondack Bank Center at the Utica Memorial Auditorium, look to see if the team doctor raises and crosses her hands over her head.
That’s the signal for the emergency medical workers and local doctor covering the game to come onto the ice, said Dr. Juleen Qandah, the local volunteer medical director for the tournament.
Quandah took part in a simulation drill in which medical personnel responded to a supposedly unconscious player lying face down on the ice along the boards, she said. All the medical providers involved in on-ice emergency care practiced exactly what each person’s role would be in such a situation, highlighting the precision and attention to detail tournament organizers put into planning, she said.
“I’ve learned how well prepared these teams travel internationally,” she said. “They’re so organized and so thorough and they really take care of their players.”
Qandah — an emergency medicine doctor who works for TeamHealth in both the Wynn Hospital and Rome Health emergency departments and at CNY Brain and Spinal Neurosurgery in New Hartford, a practice she shares with her husband — volunteered for her role because she has the right background and experience.
And it doesn’t hurt that her family are big hockey fans.
“We have season tickets to the Utica Comets,” Qandah said. “We go all the time. The kids love it. We have four kids.”
As medical director, a job that began weeks before the tournament, she helped to liaise between tournament medical staff and the tournament medical provider, the Mohawk Valley Health System, parent of the brand-new Wynn Hospital, right across the street from the Adirondack Bank Center at the Utica Memorial Auditorium where tournament games are played.
Qandah and MVHS worked together to set up the framework to provide players and team staff with efficient, quality care if needed during the tournament.
Here’s the medical care set up for the tournament, said Qandah and Patricia Charvat, senior vice president of marketing and strategy for the health system:
- The tournament has its own two medical directors who are in charge of everything to do with concussions, one of the biggest hazards in ice hockey.
- All but one of the teams brought its own team doctor.
- The teams each brought their own interpreter and many of the players and staff members speak…
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