Week 4: Solving Problems

This week we began conducting full team practices on Mondays and Wednesdays, which required extra set up because of the large group of people there. This also increases the number of athletes who need treatment at one time, which makes the training room more chaotic than usual. However, this has allowed me to gain some insight on how hectic things can be during the regular seasons when all of the teams are back practicing during season. During this time, I have had the ability to see areas where the Sports Medicine team excel in, as well as other ways in which they can improve in order to further benefit the health and well-being of student athletes.

One of the ways in which this could be facilitated could be through promoting more open conversations with the athletes about their treatment plans. From what I have seen and heard from some athletes with long term injuries, their recovery can either go one of two extremes. Either the athlete is rushed back into playing without fully recovering, which can cause a potential to reinjure the body part, or the athlete is behind in their recovery timeline. One example of the latter that I have observed first-hand, is one of the athletes with rehabbing from an ACL reconstruction. He is currently seven months post-operation; however, he had just begun running about three weeks ago. If he went according to schedule, he would have begun this about three to four months after his surgery. This could be easily remedied by simply having a weekly check-in with them to see if the exercises are getting too easy or too hard.

However, this is not solely the responsibility of the athletic trainers, it also must come from the athletes themselves. The athletic trainers can make the correct treatment plans that push the athletes, but they have to find it within themselves to have the motivation to come back stronger. This is where I believe my insight from leadership studies could help. I believe that the athletic trainers could utilize transformational leadership in order to fulfill this need. By following a transformational leadership style, trainers will be able to be fully attentive to the needs of the athletes and be able to help them reach their fullest potential.