Another Ignorant Person... Except This One Has a Newspaper Column

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.