Sports medicine and physical safety toolkit
Use these resources to help guide your patients toward safe participation in a variety of sports.
When you have active patients, from student athletes to exercise enthusiasts, office visits are the perfect time to remind them about safe ways to care for their bodies. Use the evidence-based resources on this page to help you counsel patients on risks, conduct assessments, deliver care and improve physical safety.
Sports medicine and injury prevention and management
Promoting fitness in your practice is important, whether you're a team physician or you receive requests to evaluate student athletes for team sports. This also gives you the opportunity to educate athletes on injury prevention.
These sports medicine resources help you counsel players on risks, conduct assessments, deliver care and improve fitness safety.
Pre-participation physical evaluation (PPE) forms
Get the insight needed to help your patients make the necessary preparations to safely and successfully participate in a variety of sports. PPE forms were developed in cooperation with the following medical societies: the AAFP, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Sports Medicine, American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine.
Download PPE forms for evaluating student athletes:
Team physician consensus statements
Team physician consensus statements reflect the consensus of an expert panel of sports medicine physicians. These statements are the latest sports medicine research and medical care methods for athletes. The AAFP has developed team physician consensus statements in collaboration with the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and the American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine.
- Selected issues for the adolescent athlete and the team physician
- Selected issues in injury and illness prevention and the team physician
- Psychological issues related to injury in athletes and the team physician
- Concussion (mild traumatic brain injury) and the team physician
- Mass participation event management for the team physician
- Female athlete issues for the team physician
- The team physician and return-to-play issues
- Team physician consensus statement
Clinical practice guidelines
Action Collaborative on Traumatic Brain Injury Care: Adapted Clinical Practice Guideline
(Endorsed, May 2025)
The Traumatic Brain Injury Action Collaborative Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on Management Strategies for Post-Acute Traumatic Brain Injury was developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and was endorsed by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Key Recommendations
For patients seeking outpatient care following an incident that involved a plausible mechanism of TBI, qualified health care professionals should attempt to confirm or rule-out a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury based on the 2023 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine criteria (ACRM).
Patients should be (re)directed to an ED for urgent evaluation if they have any of the following:
- Declining or fluctuating level of consciousness
- New onset of:
- Pupil asymmetry
- focal neurologic abnormality
- seizures, repeated vomiting
- marked change in behavior
- Severe or worsening headache
- Racoon (panda) eyes, battle’s sign, rhinorrhea/otorrhea or other signs of undiagnosed skull fracture
Health care professionals should not order a brain MRI or CT for every patient but may consider ordering a brain MRI or CT for those with atypical clinical features or symptom course.
Health professionals should screen all patients with TBI for social determinants of health (SDoH), including but not limited to food, housing, and transportation insecurity, transportation needs, financial difficulties, employment-related concerns, migration status, and interpersonal safety.
Health care professionals may provide written and oral information to the patient (and their accompanying family/caregiver) at the initial visit, and ongoing education at subsequent visits.
Health care professionals may screen the following domains for factors that increase the risk of persisting symptoms:
- Demographics
- Pre-existing health conditions
- Indicators of brain injury severity
- High burden post-concussion symptoms on a standardized questionnaire
- Mental health symptoms
- Psychosocial
- Social determinants of health
Health care professionals should prioritize symptoms that are most bothersome to the patient, if treated successfully, are most likely to bring about improvement in other symptoms, and/or impede participation in active rehabilitation.
Health care professionals should characterize the headache history and presentation(s) to determine if the patient has posttraumatic headache with features similar to migraine, tension-type, cervicogenic, and/or other headache types.
Qualified health care professionals should screen for new onset mental health conditions and worsening of pre-existing mental health conditions after TBI.
Referral to specialty care should be considered for patients who are at high risk for persisting symptoms, continue to have disabling symptoms beyond 30 days post-injury, and/or are not responding to first-line interventions in primary care.
Policies
These official policy statements guide the AAFP and its members.
- Sports medicine, health and fitness
- Sports medicine, counseling about risk of contact and/or collision sports
- Sports medicine: Athletic trainers for high school athletes
- Protective equipment for recreational and competitive sports activities
- Sports medicine, persons with disabilities: Participation in sports and physical activities