When it comes to my philosophy on athletic training I have learned to deal with every athlete as an individual and more importantly avoid the cookbook approach to dealing with your athletes. I believe that every athlete and every injury is different. I try and take everything into account when evaluating a new injury. Their demeanor and attitude can tell you a lot about what they are feeling. Athletes can tell you they are in pain without even saying a word. When talking to an athlete about their injury I like to try and get them to reenact the play where they were injured. I think figuring out the correct mechanism is vital to coming up with the correct diagnosis. Ideas start forming in my head well before I begin my observation and palpation portions of the evaluation. Also talking about previous injuries can help lead you to what the problem might be.
Coming up with your evaluation on an injury is only half the battle. How are you going to treat that athlete to meet his or goals? This all depends on the individual. I have learned to treat individuals based on what point in the season they are in along with they year of school they are in. A freshman football player with a sprained ankle for example would be treated more conservatively than a senior athlete with a similar injury. I would do this in order to prevent this freshman's acute injury from becoming a chronic condiiton. For the senior athlete I would be focusing mainly on doing whatever I possibly could for them to be able to play in their senior season. I am not saying I would just throw them back onto the playing field ASAP, putting them into a harmful situation. But I would like to see them back on the playing field when they feel they are ready.
Another philosophy I have regarding athletic training is to get to know your athletes. It is important to develop a relationship with your athletes so that you feel comfortable talking with one another. An athlete is more likely to come to you with their problem if you have a good relationship with them. Getting your athletes talking to you will be very helpful if you ever have to do an injury evaluation on them. It is much easier to get an idea of what happened to them if they tell you everything they can. Evaluating an athlete who does not want to talk can be very difficult. In this case I feel like you have to pry the information out of them which can be awkward and uncomfortable. So developing good relationships with your athletes will help the communication process of athletic training in a very positive way.
I like how you bring up the cookbook method at the beginning. In my experience I have seen health care providers take this approach, when there could have been other things they could have done.
ReplyDeleteAlso it is good that you approach every athlete and every situation differently because they are exactly that, different. Meeting the athletes goals are important and unfortunately they always are not realistic. I know I had my first encounter with having to tell an athlete they were not practicing that day because they simply were not ready when they thought they were.
Athletes are not always the easiest people to work with especially when they are hurt and all they want to do is go back and play, so that is the tough part about our job...
Good job Hoffman