Reducing Paper Waste and Improving Time Efficiency; A Quality Improvement Study

The Athletic Trainer at Summit Country Day implements many therapeutic exercises in her practice when it comes to injury healing and progression. She is frequently seeing athletes about their injuries and is often hand-writing rehabilitation sheets for each of them as well as scanning in the rehabilitation sheets into the student health tracker online. As an athletic trainer who sees over 500 athletes, this is less than ideal as it not only is a waste of paper, but it also takes time out of evaluating other athletes and them receiving the care they need which can be was time consuming for the athletic trainer and the athletes. The goal of this study was to address these issues by implementing a more effective and efficient system for the athletic trainer. It was decided by both the athletic trainer and I that rehabilitation exercises would be more effective using a QR code system to distribute the rehabs to the athletes. The QR codes were created based on reoccurring injuries that would be see in the athletic training facility along with some other pathologies that were not necessarily common but were some that we have evaluated at Summit. These QR codes would be scanned by the athletes and show exercises along with pictures and videos of the exercise being given. Baseline data was gathered for 2 weeks prior to implementing the QR codes. Once the baseline data was gathered, we then implemented the QR codes by hanging the papers up along the wall coming into the training room. Data was then taken for two more weeks. Based on the data collected it was shown that printed rehabilitation papers did decrease once the QR codes were implemented in the training room. It is recommended that this project be adapted to reduce paper waste and improve time efficiency.