Local medical providers team up to cover players at IIHF Women's World Hockey Championship

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 English so that medical translation services haven’t been needed.

• A volunteer doctor sits in the Aud during each game, ready to help if needed. A doctor, podiatrist, nurse practitioner or physician assistant attends almost all the practices. MVHS and Qandah organized the volunteers who receive free tickets so their families can watch the game, too.

• Two ambulances are parked outside the Aud during the entire tournament. Emergency medical services staff attend every game as well.

• MVHS created an internal team at Wynn Hospital to prepare for patients from the tournament who need diagnostic tests or care, to get them registered and seen expeditiously.

• A separate room was set up in the Wynn emergency/trauma department for tournament patients.

• Orthopedic surgeons and dentists volunteered to be on call during the tournament.

• MVHS provided medical supplies likely to be needed and arranged to have pharmacists on call in case prescriptions are needed after hours.

In the end, 25 doctors, residents, nurse practitioners and physician assistants from MVHS, Rome Health and independent practices volunteered to cover the games and practices, Charvat said. Another surgeon and two orthopedic surgeons are on call at the hospital for tournament-related cases as are six dentists and dental residents, she said.

“It’s a huge effort. And then we have all the people inside the hospital,” Charvat said. “We have the appointed team members for the emergency department, registration, radiology. And the ED is nurses and doctors. Pharmacy and lab.

“For everybody that’s been involved on our team,” she added, “it’s has been a labor of love and very proud to be part of this.”

Lining up medical volunteers turned out not to be difficult at all, Qandah said.

“I’ve had vascular to surgery to ENT to anyone and everyone be willing to help,” she said, “and be a part of it so that the players and teams are well taken care of.”

MVHS had provided some care to a few team staff members who got sick and to players to minor injuries, she said.

Dr. Meira Yeger-McKeever, of MVHS, is one of those volunteer doctors who signed up to cover seven games.

“I am a sports-medicine-trained orthopedist, she said. “So sports coverage, these types of events, these were the main part of my training. So it kind of felt like it was my responsibility when MVHS asked for my help.”

In fact, Yeger-McKeever already has experience covering Utica Comets games sometimes over the years.

“My job is to sit there and I have to watch the game,” she said. “How cool is that?”

She’s also enjoyed meeting colleagues from around the world and learning more about their countries, she said.

And Yeger-McKeever has already picked up one useful skill. One of the doctors with the International Hockey Federation taught her how to go out on the ice to help a fallen player without falling down herself, she said.

The area’s medical providers have been proud to step forward as a community to embrace this community event, Charvat said.

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“It’s very exciting to be part of an event this big,” Yeger-McKeever agreed. “And on the world stage. A little nerve-wracking. We want to make sure we represent Utica and the USA well, but yeah, very exciting to be part of this.”

During at least her first two games, Yeger-McKeever didn’t need to use her new walking-on-ice skills. Instead she just enjoyed sitting with the emergency medical technicians and paramedics, watching great hockey players with amazing skills in an excited crowd that embraced the teams, she said.

Qandah has also enjoyed seeing afternoon games without the Canadian or American teams when students from area schools fill up empty seats, shouting and cheering to encourage the players, she said.

“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime to see an international event like this,” Qandah said. “And it’s beneficial to the players, too. Instead of playing to no one in the audience, they’re playing to an arena full of kids.”

And after all the weeks of planning, she’s hoping there won’t be any injuries and the local medical staff won’t be needed.

“But I do know,” she added, “if anything happened, they would be in the best hands possible.”

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Women's hockey: MVHS, local doctors give medical coverage for tourney