Athletic Trainers
Definition: Athletic trainers are recognized healthcare professionals by the American Medical Association ( AMA ), Health Resources Service Administration ( HRSA ), and Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS ). They are involved in the prevention, examination, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of injuries and medical conditions.
“Athletic Training.” NATA, 19 Mar. 2015, https://www.nata.org/about/athletic-training.
Let’s talk locations
Athletic trainers do not only work at high schools; in fact, most don’t. The breakdown of the majority of ATs (athletic trainers ) Job settings, pulled from NATA.org, are listed below :
26% in College/University
24% Secondary Schools
16% Clinic and Hospital
12% Students
3% Professional Sports
“Job Settings.” NATA, 19 Mar. 2015, https://www.nata.org/about/athletic-training/job-settings.
But what do they do?
Evaluate and provide aid to injuries
Apply tape, bandages, and braces to protect and or prevent further injuries
Spine boarding
First Aid & Emergency Care
Rehabilitation programs for injured individuals
Therapeutic Modalities
Developing Injury prevention programs
Administrative task
(“Athletic Trainer - Explore Health Care Careers - Mayo Clinic College of Medicine & Science”)
Interviews
To fully understand the scope of this field and the hard work that goes into it every day, we decided to interview two athletic trainers in person. The interviewees, Jeff Hopp and Alli Bird, are both secondary school athletic trainers, but each has a different experience in their day-to-day activities and the steps they took to become an athletic trainer, along with a few other differences in their responses to various questions.
These interviews were recorded, and minimal grammatical corrections were made to keep the responses as authentic to the original as possible.
Interviewee: Alli Bird
The first question we asked Ms.Bird was what inspired her to pursue this profession, to which she said:
“ I decided to become an athletic trainer when I was a senior in high school. I had gone through a couple of injuries, one specifically that led me to physical therapy.” …“And while I was in physical therapy, I fell in love with rehab, but I realized that physical therapists oftentimes get to meet the patient, especially athletes and work with them, but then never get to actually see them on the field.” …“And that's something that I didn't really like from physical therapy. And then my senior year, I really bonded with my athletic trainer at my high school and realized it was the best of both worlds with saying around athletics getting to see the patients before the injuries during and after the injuries.”
Then we asked what a typical day-to-day looked like for her, and she said:
“I'm in a different boat than most because I am not only an athletic trainer, I am also a healthcare science teacher as well as an EMT. So a typical day for me is primarily my teaching duties. I will get to the school, prep for things at around seven, maybe a little bit before, and then teach through the entire day. and then as soon as the bell rings, you know, head down to the clinic, do my athletic training duties, either practices or game coverage until, you know, the wee hours of the evening, and then repeat all day again the next day.”
After those questions, we moved into the education portion of the interview. Her next question was, What level of education or training was required for the profession?
“Again, since I have a couple different certifications under my belt, my education pathway is kind of a little bit different than most. I have two degrees for athletic training. One is my bachelor's of bachelor's science with a concentration of athletic training and then a master's of science with a concentration in advanced athletic training. When I transition into teaching that led me to my certification and EMT to teach my EMT course, and I'm also working on an EMS instructor, uh certification, and now I'm working on my last and fingers crossed final degree, which is my education specialist degree to allow me to get my teaching certification. “
Next, we asked her specifically about athletic training: Were any certifications required outside of a degree to become an athletic trainer? She responded:
"The BOC National certification for athletic trainers is required to become a athletic trainer on the national standpoint. And then each state that you work in has specific requirements for either licensure or certification to work in that state so not only do I have my national certification through the BOC, which is the board of certification, I also have my Georgia licensure, which allows me to work in the state of Georgia. “
The final section of questions focused on career growth. Her first question in this section was, "How do you handle work-life balance?" She answered:
“It's challenging. It's something that I'm still trying to figure out. One of the biggest things is learning to say no, that you don't always have to help with everything just because someone asks you, so that's one way that I'm really learning how to maintain and establish my work life balance. “
Then we asked, Are there any emerging trends or technologies that is shaping your field in athletic training? She stated:
“The way that treatments are done, there's a lot of new manual therapy techniques that are out there as well as different, therapeutic modalities that are out there that athletic trainers are utilizing. scraping” “dry needling, cupping a lot of different manual therapies that weren't used uh when I first started athletic training are now being utilized on a daily basis in the clinics, which I think is really cool.” “We're even using them in the clinic, like light therapy is becoming big, and we're seeing uh positive trend with our athletes and um positive outcomes with their rehab when we when we utilize those those tools.”
Our final question for Ms.Bird was kinda of a fun one. We asked, What is the biggest misconception about your field? She answered:
“That we're personal trainers. We are not personal trainers. Do we have the knowledge to build a strength and conditioning workout? Yes, we do. However, that is not all that we do. We provide a lot of services to our athletes and to our patients. We do prevention of injuries, management, and evaluation of injuries, treatment, we can take care of emergency situations, we can provide any sort of like nutritional and hydration recommendations. We can do therapeutic modalities, treatments, rehab, rehab protocols. Our the best way to describe our profession and what we can do to prevent this misconception is if you mold an EMS provider and a physical therapist together, that's kind of the easiest way to explain what an AT can do.”
Interviewing Alli Bird was a very insightful experience, and we learned a lot of new information while interviewing that we were happy to share. What was your favorite question from Ms Bird’s interview? Let us know in the comments.
But now, on to the next Interviewee, Jeff Hopp.
Interviewee: Jeff Hopp
The first question we asked Mr.Hopp was what his profession and what degrees he had…( Yes, we realized we forgot to ask Alli Bird this question. Just go with it. ) He answered:
“I'm athletic trainer and I have a bachelor of science and athletic training”
Then we asked, What inspired him to pursue this profession, to which he said:
“I was an athlete in high school, had a couple injuries in high school, dealt with an athlete trainer there and it got me interested in the profession.”
Then we asked what a typical day-to-day looked like for him, and he said:
“During the day in the athlete training clinic we'll do rehab and treatment on anybody that has injuries that may not have an academic class. So for instance, if they've got weight training or health or something like that on or even during our lunch period, they come down during and do rehab and treatments at that point. After school, we get our rush of after noon athletes trying to get ready for practices. And then we're here covering practices till probably 5:30ish, give or take. Um and then covering any games that we may have during the week.”
After those questions, we moved into the education portion of the interview. His next question was, What level of education or training was required for the profession?
“As of now, so when I graduated, you had to have a bachelor's degree in athletic training. and then you had to pass a board of certification exam. Now you have to have a master's degree and then pass a board of cerfiication exam.”
Next, we asked him, What advice do you have for students trying to pursue this career? ( Also yes, we forgot to ask Ms.Bird this question. Give us a break. ) He answered:
“Understand that this is not a nine to five job, right? It's not an eight hours a day, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, it is a lot of work. But it can be very rewarding if you are willing to put the time in.”
The final section of questions focused on career growth. His first question in this section was, "How do you handle work-life balance?" He answered:
“Worklife balance can be tough at times. I think that is an overused term. But essentially, you know, we work and cover as much as we can and at some point, you just have to realize that you can only do so much. So when work is done, you just have to go home.”
To continue, we asked him, How has your profession evolved over the years? To which he said:
“The profession is evolved and changed quite a bit, right? We've learned a lot about how we treat injuries, concussions being a big one.The use of ice has changed, right? We know it doesn't do. It doesn't reduce inflammation of swelling like we thought it used to. So research has changed a lot of how we treat injuries. And then I think the roles of an athlete training, the expectations of an athletic training are still are still changing and improving. Athletic trainers used to put in way too many hours for not enough pay. Salaries are going up, and the expectations are becoming more realistic.”
Then we asked, Are there any emerging trends or technologies that is shaping your field in athletic training? He stated:
“Emerging trends, yeah, like I said, we're using less than we use to because we know it doesn't do, what we thought it did for a long time. We've learned that over through research. Concussion care has changed a lot in the last ten to 15 years. Then we're learning a new ways to treat injuries, cupping is something that's relatively new, dry needing, infrared therapies there's all kinds of new modalities that are coming out that we're finding that are beneficial as well.”
Our final question for Mr.Hopp was our fun one again. We asked, What is the biggest misconception about your field? He answered:
“The biggest misconception. So one of things about athletic training is a lot of people see us just sitting in and watching games or dealing with water, so they think that we, you know, don't do a whole lot and most of what's done as far as athete trainers go is done behind the scenes and most people don't recognize what we do. You know, there's been a few instances, high high profile instances of things that have happened to Damar Hamlin. was one of the big ones, right? Athletic trainers saved that athlete's life because of their training. Um, so one of the big misconceptions is our level of training and what our actual knowledge is and what we actually do.
Both Alli Bird's and Jeff Hopp’s interviews were extremely insightful. Together, we gained an understanding of their day-to-day activities as well as the journey to this profession and some of the interesting trends starting to pop up within the scope of athletic training as a whole.
Let us know in the comments your thoughts on everything. Which profession would you like us to do a deep dive into next?
