What an Athletic Trainer Actually Does
The profession behind the water bottles
Athletic trainers are licensed healthcare professionals. They are not personal trainers, and the difference matters for students considering the field.
The big idea
An athletic trainer is a healthcare provider who works under the direction of a physician, and the sideline is only one of the places they work.
The credential
LAT, ATC carries two separate meanings. ATC is the national board certification, earned by graduating from an accredited professional program and passing the Board of Certification examination. LAT signals a state license — in Texas, athletic trainers are licensed at the state level, and practicing without that license is not permitted.
Entry into the profession now runs through a master's degree from a program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE), combined with supervised clinical education across a range of settings and patient populations.
Five domains of practice
The Board of Certification organizes the profession into practice domains. In plain language, an athletic trainer is responsible for:
- Injury and illness prevention
- Screening, protective equipment and taping, environmental monitoring, conditioning guidance, and wellness education.
- Examination and assessment
- Evaluating an injury on the spot, forming a clinical impression, and deciding whether it needs referral.
- Immediate and emergency care
- Managing the acute event — arrest, spine injury, heat stroke, fracture, severe bleeding.
- Therapeutic intervention
- Designing and running rehabilitation, and progressing an athlete through return-to-play criteria.
- Healthcare administration
- Documentation, policy, budgets, HIPAA and FERPA obligations, and professional responsibility.
Where they actually work
Secondary schools and colleges are the settings most students picture. But athletic trainers also work in hospitals and physician practices, in industrial and occupational health keeping workers safe on factory floors, with the military and public safety agencies, in performing arts, and with professional teams.
If you like anatomy, enjoy solving problems in real time, and want a healthcare job that is not behind a desk, this is a field worth investigating early. Shadowing your own school's athletic trainer is the single best first step — most are glad to be asked.
Terms from this lesson
- ATC
- Athletic Trainer, Certified — the national credential from the Board of Certification.
- LAT
- Licensed Athletic Trainer — a state-issued license to practice.
- CAATE
- The accrediting body for professional athletic training education programs.
- Standing orders
- Written protocols from a supervising physician defining what care an athletic trainer may provide.
- HIPAA
- Federal law protecting the privacy of health information.
Check yourself
Answer out loud before you open the card. Recall is what makes it stick.
Classroom activity
Interview the AT
Send students to interview an athletic trainer — at your school, a nearby college, or a clinic — with five questions they wrote themselves. Require one question about a day that did not go according to plan. Students come back with a far more accurate picture of the job than any career-day slide deck produces, and several of them come back interested.