I am quickly reaching my one year anniversary since finishing my undergraduate education and becoming a certified athletic trainer. A lot has happened since then including starting work on my master's degree, my master's thesis and working with many different athletes and teams via my graduate assistant position. I have learned a lot and it would be impossible to list everything but I figured it would be a good idea to reflect back on a few major themes.
1) I Don't Know Everything
- I need to challenge everything that I think I knew and will learn in the future.
- I need to be open to trying new things and open to trying to learn new things. I don't want to be stuck in the past from being close-minded.
- I have learned that I can learn a lot just from listening to my patients and comparing and contrasting their injuries, behaviors, and responses. This allows me to learn how to better optimize my ability to treat them, and how to best approach them as a person and not just an injury.
- There was a lot of "tools" in my toolbox before I started my first year as a clinician and I accumulated even more tools as the year went on. I lacked a key component for all of my different tools. I didn't have a very good owner's manual to bring everything all together. I was throwing noodles at the wall and hoping they would stick instead of creating a true 4 course meal with a vision and plan.
- Don't let ego get in the way of asking others for advice, referring your athletes or letting them seek a second opinion.
2) Injuries. What You See Isn't Always What You Get.
- I learned that psychological factors can often play a huge role in injuries. They influence how fast a person can return from injury, how compliant they are with treatment, how they treat you and even how or why they are injured!
- There can be unexpected complications that not even you can predict. For example, I had a basketball player undergo surgery to have their os trigonum removed. Rehab was then delayed over a month because the surgery left them with an internal staph infection that required a second surgery and a week stay in the hospital.
- You really need to investigate an injury. Was this injury a true acute, random chance incident or was it the result of some sort of underlying movement dysfunction? I would bet that the majority of injuries have some sort of underlying dysfunction and aren't by random chance like an injury caused by contact with another athlete.
- Injuries do not all fit into a "true diagnosis." People always want to know what their injury is but often they have symptoms such as pain as a result of some asymmetries, mobility restrictions and movement pattern dysfunctions. Nobody wants to know that their problem is poor dorsiflexion and proximal hip strength, they want some unique and special name for their knee pain.
3) Professionalism is huge.
- You interactions with coaches, patients and parents will not always be peaches and cream. Sometimes people will be frustrated and vent that towards you. Initially, it can be challenging to remember that you must remain professional and respond accordingly. Even though they may be in the wrong at the time, you must not go down to their level because they could lose respect for you in the future.
- Being so fresh out of school and placed into my position resulted in me caring for athletes that were very close in age to me. This helped with having an understanding of my patients and getting passed the introductory phase with them but it was a challenge in other ways
- I had to earn the respect and trust of your patients, their parents and coaches.
- I had to work to remain professional and not act "my age" with the athletes. I had to create an invisible barrier...I was their athletic trainer and not their friend. However, I could still be their friends. If that makes any sense...
- Professionalism is a key factor when attempting to network with colleagues and others.
- It is always best to behave as professional as possible and then act accordingly after having made a connection and learning their personality. You never know who could be a future employer, coworker, reference or etc.
- You also may need to make connections to help yourself and your patients. Like I said, I don't know everything so I needed to seek advice, find new ideas or refer my athletes somewhere else. Being able to do this is professional in of itself because you truly integrate yourself as a member of the "team" approach to health care for your patients. However, it must be done respectfully, responsibly and professionally.
Well those are three major themes that I felt were important in molding myself in my first year. I am sure they will continue to be significant factors but I am also sure that there will be many more lessons to be learned. Perhaps these ideas can help other soon-to-be certified or newly certified professionals.
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