I saw a link on the NATA's twitter feed today about the president of the Pennsylvania Athletic Trainer's Association responding to an opinion column in a newspaper. Mr. Greg Janik wrote a pretty basic response detailing the education and certifications of Athletic Trainers and their competence in evaluating and treating concussions. A response was certainly justified in setting the record straight and correcting the original columnist, Paul Carpenter.
You can read Carpenter's column here: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/carpenter/mc-paul-carpenter-concussions-20110201,0,5280899.column
You can read Janik's response here: http://articles.mcall.com/2011-02-07/opinion/mc-concussions-janik-20110207_1_concussions-pennsylvania-athletic-trainers-society-interscholastic-athletes
This Carpenter guy clearly has no clue. It drives me crazy that ignorant fools like this get paid to share their "opinions" and spread false information. If you don't want to read the whole thing just know that Mr. Carpenter feels that "trainers" are not qualified to evaluate a concussion and decide if a student-athlete is fit to return to play because they are "nothing but flunkies for coaches, some of whom are willing to do anything to win." Read that again. "FLUNKIES FOR COACHES." Apparently we all work for Bud Kilmer. Go Coyotes...
The newspaper, the Morning Call, claims that Carpenter will be responding to his apparently numerous critics tomorrow. I'll be waiting to see what he writes and will post what I find. Hopefully the critics have corrected him and a full apology is issued.
If being called a "flunkie" doesn't inspire you to do your part to promote this profession, I don't know what will. Please share those links to other Athletic Trainers.
Though I’m not quite as upset as you are at this guy, I do completely understand where you are coming from. The problem with the whole situation is the perception we have with the general population. Nobody really knows what we do. I’ve even dealt with doctors that have no idea what we do. When you throw that term athletic trainer out there it is most often associated with personal trainer or strength coach. Until we correct this ignorance there will continue to be people like this that make ignorant comments. We just have to go about educating the public and, possibly more importantly, the medical community who we are as a profession. I also wouldn’t be totally opposed to changing the title we go by. I understand the point of view that we shouldn’t have to change ourselves because of the ignorance of others, but I do think it would go a long way in the acceptance of us as medical professionals. I know they kicked around the idea of athletic therapist for a while and it never really caught on, but I think we could find something much better. Something like Sports Medic or Sports Medicine Practitioner or something that sounds a little more medically based then trainer does. It would be a hard thing to change at this point, but our profession is still a relatively new thing and now may be the time to do it if it’s going to be done. I do feel that if we could change the name it may help the lay person get away from the thought of us a professional waterboys.
ReplyDeleteAs far as his whole argument on concussions goes, he is grossly uninformed. He is only doing what every older generation has ever done. When I played the hits were harder and we didn’t wear helmets and nobody ever got a concussion. All though it is true that incidents of concussions are much higher in athletics today than they were in the “good ole days,” the knowledge of the medical community and technology in place to diagnose concussions has also come a long way. It’s the same argument that exists in football. There were fewer head injuries when players wore leather helmets, but that was because it hurt too bad to use your helmet as a weapon. I’m sure there is a little carryover of the same effects in hockey. By saying that an athletic trainer is not qualified to diagnose a concussion, Carpenter is just showing complete ignorance on the matter. Like Janik said, a lot of the authorities in research on concussions and development of protocols are athletic trainers. When doing my own research projects in undergrad most of the articles I came across were written by athletic trainers. In some ways I almost feel we are more qualified than some doctor to evaluate a kid with a concussion. Because of the personality and mood alterations that head injuries can have, someone who is around the athlete every day has a much better chance of noticing small changes in mental status. The only problem with all this is the liability you take on by diagnosing the concussion and making return to play decisions. That is why most institutions and a lot of school boards are now mandating physician clearance for return to play.
I may have written too much, but this is a topic that I do feel pretty strongly about. Until we can gain respect from the medical community and general population we will always be looked at as that coach’s crony that tapes ankles and pushes people back in to games. As time passes we are just going to have to keep on fighting to improve our professional status. In the end there is more and more money going into sports every year, and someone has to keep those millionaires healthy and happy. Hope this is what you were going for..