In 2009 Washington became the first state to pass a law requiring that young athletes be cleared by a healthcare provider to return to play after a concussion. In the next few years all states passed similar laws as awareness of the danger of sports-related concussions grew.

But have those laws been effective?

Using one measurement, the answer is no, said Jacquelyn Deichman, a nursing student at Washington State University who researched adolescent concussions for her WSU Honors College thesis.

To gauge the laws’ effect, she looked at “leave without being seen” rates for sports- and recreation-related adolescent concussions in U.S. emergency rooms. … » More …

Families of rural children with mild head injuries pay more for medical care and get less of it, a Washington State University analysis has found.

Janessa M. Graves, an assistant professor of nursing at WSU Spokane, analyzed data on more than 380,000 children with mild traumatic brain injuries, which usually involve concussions. They account for almost all types of traumatic brain injury, moderate and severe being the other two. On the whole, traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability among children and adolescents in the United States.

Patients with mild traumatic brain injury are hospitalized less frequently and often get treated … » More …

Chronic pain and depression are linked to food insecurity, according to new research headed by WSU College of Nursing PhD student Teresa Bigand. 

The United States is getting more diverse, and that’s a challenge for health care providers, said Professor Janet Katz of the Washington State University College of Nursing.

One in five people suffers depression after being injured. It’s a psychological effect of trauma that can influence a person’s physical recovery, ability to return to work and relationships. 

Connie Nguyen-Truong, an assistant professor at the Washington State University College of Nursing in Vancouver, and community partners Chiao-Yun Hsiao and Victoria Demchak, will be awarded the R. Davilene Carter Presidential Prize for best manuscript from the American Association for Cancer Education at the group’s annual meeting next month. 

An internet discovery led an Italian nurse to the Washington State University College of Nursing this summer. 

Suffering a traumatic injury from a car wreck, shooting or a fall often is followed by depression or PTSD, affecting the victim’s recovery.

Dr. Therese Richmond, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, will talk about these linkages at the Cleveland Visiting Scholar lecture on Oct. 4. 

How do people with chronic pain move from appropriate use of opioids to addiction? And what prompts them to seek addiction treatment? As the United States grapples with rising opioid addiction and overdose death rates, the answers to those questions are critical. Yet they’re not well understood. 

Researchers at the Washington State University College of Nursing received $9.8 million in external funding in the 2018 federal fiscal year —up 37 percent from the previous year. About 62 percent of the College of Nursing’s external funding came from competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health.