3 Lessons I Learned In My First Year As A Clinician

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.

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Building Bridges: Inter & Intra-Profession Collaboration

Somehow, someway during my initial years of schooling I developed this idea that the profession of athletic training needed to compete heavily with other professions. I used to think that I needed to boycott the teachings of other professions like physical therapists, strength and conditioning specialists and person trainers.  I also had an urge to compete against others within my own profession and try to be most intelligent or most competent clinician/academic. Finishing school and starting my professional career has definitely changed my thought processes.

While some level of competitiveness is necessary in a world where multiple professions compete for patients or clients from the same pool of people due to similar skill sets. However, I have begun to realize that this previous thought process hurt three groups of people. Thinking and behaving the way I did disadvantaged myself (the clinician), potential patients, and the different professions.

Recently, I have worked to open myself up to the ideas of others and other professions. Just think, where would human intelligence even be now without the collective body of knowledge that is shared between individuals? We might be able to think the same but the accumulation of knowledge that is passed around and down through time is what makes it special.

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