It is a common misconception that athletic trainers “train athletes.”
This is understandable, given our title. However, this is far from all
we do. We are not personal trainers, we are not strength coaches.
Simply put, athletic trainers are highly educated and licensed
healthcare professionals in sports medicine. While we do sometimes train
athletes in comprehensive, injury prevention-based strength and
conditioning programs, we also respond to, assess, and treat injuries,
illnesses, and ongoing medical conditions. We have unique expertise in
the recognition and management of concussions. We help rehabilitate
injuries from the moment they happen until the athlete steps back on the
field days or months later. We refer patients to other members of our
sports medicine team when necessary. We focus on preventing injury
through education, hydration, strengthening, taping, and bracing. We
work and collaborate with surgeons, physicians, physical therapists,
physician assistants, chiropractors, family medicine doctors, parents,
coaches and other athletic trainers.
Athletic trainers are health care professionals who collaborate with physicians to optimize patient and client activity and participation in athletics, work and life. The practice of athletic training encompasses the prevention, examination and diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of emergent, acute, subacute, and chronic neuromusculoskeletal conditions and certain medical conditions in order to minimize subsequent impairments, functional limitations, disability, and societal limitations.
Athletic trainers work in all kinds of environments; from physical
therapy clinics, to doctors’ offices and operating rooms. From high
schools to middle schools to colleges and universities. From performing
arts to the military. Often most visible are the professional sports
settings, as team ATs or injury spotters. We’re even branching out into
the industrial setting, minimizing worker’s compensation claims through
prevention and saving companies tens of thousands of dollars. There are
those that work “PRN,” or “as needed.” And there are those that work to
educate the next generation of athletic trainers in accredited athletic
training programs.
Athletic trainers are ready to wear many hats day to day; acting as a
confidant one minute, then a nurse, coach, parent, or friend the next,
and oftentimes all of these in one day. Due to our versatility and the
variety of our knowledge and skill sets, athletic trainers continue to
forge new paths into different fields, as new settings discover uses for
these jacks-of-all-trades. A professor oce described athletic trainers
like a multi-tool – because we’ve got a little something for everything
we might encounter.
