Ex-athlete inspired by experience to go into medicine
Marissa Gedman, 26, played for the Boston Pride in the National Women’s Hockey League for three years after graduating from Harvard in 2015. She was on the Harvard hockey team before that, where she suffered from a concussion — not unlike many of her teammates.
Gedman was inspired to go into the medical field by her experience as a professional athlete and is now working as a medical assistant in orthopedics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital while studying for her master’s degree in biomedical science at Tufts University.
Daughter of former Red Sox catcher Rich Gedman, she is now applying for medical school. She shared her story with the Herald’s Mary Markos:
There is a huge need for more research on female athletes and hockey players specifically.
I would say just from all my exposure through my own concussion and my teammates’ concussions and other orthopedic injuries, I definitely gained a huge respect for the medical field and owe so much to the doctors I worked with over my career. Now, being able to work in Brigham and Women’s orthopedics and hopefully be a physician in the future, it all stems from my experience as an athlete.
My biggest exposure was through teammates who had lifechanging concussions that affected their life outside of hockey.
I have endless anecdotes about players who got one or two or a series of concussions and whether it’s due to coming back and playing too soon or not getting proper medical attention, they end up having far-reaching effects, whether it’s time off from school or symptoms lasting longer than a year or two. It becomes a
real-life issue for them . ... This is a solvable issue, why can’t we figure out how to properly treat these athletes that need this medical attention?
She said most of the research is on men, a trend that has helped motivate her to keep up her studies on why women are not better represented. Is it a case of them not reporting the injury because they’re nervous? There are tons of social effects. “Will I not play anymore? Will my teammates think I’m a baby?” Just looking at the attitudes of the coaches and players and why this issue has come to be something we’re now talking about.