Asha De­Fre­itas-Mose­ley

Any team that has ever had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with an ath­let­ic train­er for a sea­son, not a phys­io­ther­a­pist, not a per­son who has some first aid train­ing, but a cer­ti­fied ath­let­ic train­er, would have to ad­mit to the ob­vi­ous dif­fer­ence in pro­fi­cien­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy in the way an ath­let­ic train­er at­tends to and deals with his/her ath­letes.Ath­let­ic train­ers are groomed to deal with the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges that ac­com­pa­ny work­ing with a team.Every­thing from as­sess­ing an in­jury on the field/court in full view of the view­ing au­di­ence, to re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing them to full re­turn to play; from gath­er­ing their med­ical back­ground to hav­ing all in­sur­ance in­for­ma­tion on hand in the event of an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion; from iden­ti­fy­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenges of be­ing in­jured to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with coach­es about their man­age­ment in the best in­ter­est of the ath­lete.Ath­let­ic train­ers re­ceive the most ex­ten­sive train­ing to meet the spe­cif­ic de­mands of ath­letes.Pre-game prepa­ra­tion usu­al­ly en­tails some sort of strap­ping or tap­ing to help in­jured ath­letes to stay in the game while cop­ing with an in­jury.

Ath­let­ic train­ers must be pro­fi­cient in tap­ing tech­niques to be able to sup­port the joint or mus­cle prop­er­ly; to un­der­stand what type of tape is most suit­able to do the job; to ap­ply the an­gle of ten­sion to avoid un­nat­ur­al torque that would cause fur­ther dam­age to the body rather than pre­vent it, etc.When an ath­lete goes down on the field, the as­sess­ment process starts im­me­di­ate­ly, re­cap­ping what hap­pened just be­fore the ath­lete went down and then ob­serv­ing the re­ac­tion of the ath­lete to the mech­a­nism of in­jury-all this while run­ning to the aid of the ath­lete.Each sport has its own rules with ref­er­ence to when the first re­spon­der is al­lowed to come on­to the play­ing field/court to at­tend to the ath­lete but once there, re­sum­ing play as quick­ly as pos­si­ble is the pri­or­i­ty.Thus, as­sess­ing the ath­lete to de­ter­mine whether par­tic­i­pa­tion can con­tin­ue or not, or whether the ath­lete re­quires med­ical as­sis­tance to be safe­ly re­moved or not are high pri­or­i­ty.Se­ri­ous in­juries like lig­a­ment rup­tures, spinal in­juries and con­cus­sions must be man­aged care­ful­ly to avoid fur­ther in­jury to the ath­lete.

Splint­ing and spine board­ing to im­mo­bi­lize the in­jured area pri­or to trans­port­ing to the hos­pi­tal are skills ath­let­ic train­ers ex­e­cute adept­ly in or­der to pro­vide the best care to the ath­lete.Im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­ing and as­sess­ing an ath­lete for a con­cus­sion and man­ag­ing him/her there­after can ex­tend for weeks stress­ing the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing such in­juries. Sports like rug­by that are very high con­tact in na­ture, should al­ways in­sist on hav­ing med­ical per­son­nel present or read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to ex­e­cute these skills pro­fi­cient­ly.The Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NA­TA) in the USA man­dates that ath­let­ic train­ers re­new their Ba­sic Life Sup­port (BLS) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion an­nu­al­ly as well as en­sure that im­mu­niza­tions such as the he­pati­tis B virus (HPV) are kept cur­rent due to the first re­spon­der role in­her­it­ed with the pro­fes­sion.Team med­ical cov­er­age is some­thing that ad­min­is­tra­tors con­tin­ue to see as op­tion­al in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ath­letes are ex­pect­ed to push their bod­ies to the lim­it with lit­tle to no pro­vi­sions in place to ad­dress their med­ical needs in the event of an in­jury.

Such prac­tice is al­lowed to pros­per be­cause (1) ath­letes do not unite to in­sist on bet­ter for them­selves from their club/as­so­ci­a­tion and (2) the love of ath­letes for the game over­rides all the sub­stan­dard con­di­tions with­in which they are ex­pect­ed to train and com­pete.So, in the mean­time, I have seen ath­letes sus­tain con­cus­sions and re­turn to play pri­or to prop­er med­ical re­lease. I have al­so seen ath­letes train on mis­di­ag­nosed ACL rup­tures on­ly to even­tu­al­ly re­al­ize the se­ri­ous­ness of their in­jury and that it might war­rant surgery.In both in­stances, ath­letes are not in­clined to the most fa­vor­able out­come. Rather the risk for fur­ther in­jury is height­ened and their ath­let­ic ca­reer pos­si­bly short­ened.Ath­letes no­tice when their club/or­ga­ni­za­tion takes an in­ter­est in their well-be­ing and it re­al­ly adds to team morale.

That sense of sup­port and ap­pre­ci­a­tion bridges com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the two en­ti­ties (ath­lete and ad­min­is­tra­tion) and can on­ly ex­tend to­wards pos­i­tive out­comes.How­ev­er, putting the sys­tems in place to fa­cil­i­tate ath­letes in this way re­quires pre-plan­ning.Dur­ing the off-sea­son, the sports med­i­cine team should be iden­ti­fied and pro­to­cols cre­at­ed and ready for ex­e­cu­tion when pre-sea­son starts.Rather than as­sume that hir­ing the prop­er pro­fes­sion­als will be too cost­ly, make it a pri­or­i­ty and find cre­ative ways to ac­cess the funds to af­ford it while ne­go­ti­at­ing rates or con­di­tions with the ser­vice provider.If even com­plete cov­er­age can­not be pro­vid­ed, iden­ti­fy the most im­por­tant ar­eas of con­cern and start to pro­vide that.Our ath­letes have gone with so lit­tle in the realm of prop­er med­ical care that even a small step in the right di­rec­tion will have a pos­i­tive im­pact.