Emotional Resilience by Michelle Holt

In a recent survey that I came across, emotional resilience was defined as is the ability to positively adjust to an adverse, stressful, or difficult situations and maintain one’s good mental health.  The goal of this survey was to understand emotional resilience of athletic trainers and the factors that may contribute to emotional resiliency in different workplace settings. This is really important for each individual to question, and I believe handling confrontation is a one of those factors.

One of my personal strengths (Gallup’s Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath) is harmony. I LOVE when people put aside differences to harmonize or at least cooperate in life and work, making the positive results that much greater. I used to steer clear of confrontation thinking that it hurts harmony, and I confused it as creating conflict rather than finding a solution to the problem. Before I was mature enough to learn, I struggled in a work environment that was full of it, crumbling emotionally instead of rising to my potential. I also experienced a work environment that was the other side of the spectrum where confrontation was avoided so much in the culture that there was a huge lack of accountability. In this situation, accountability would be necessary for making progress. So, it was ton of effort to make the wheels spin but we were still going nowhere. After different stages of learning the hard way, I see and accept confrontation as an opportunity to build harmony and as a leadership skill that is vital to hold your team together through accountability.

I bring this topic up because I think that in any job the right fit for someone has a lot more to do with this aspect of emotional resilience. Think about emotional resilience as it relates to how you interact with others, but also how the environment (mainly the people) allow you to maintain a healthy mental state. People around you have different skill levels and methods keeping the emotional balance. What do you need and what do you need to do to positively impact your work and life environment?

ATs hosting secondary school PPE’s

It’s that time of year again for secondary school ATs. The medical eligibility paperwork process for next year is in full swing. Since we just wrapped up hosting our own physical exam night, I have PPE’s on my mind. All the hard work and preparation my worker and I did in advance kept things going as smoothly as it could have gone…even despite the doctors showing up late or cancelling last minute. But, when it was all said and done I couldn’t help but question, why do all this?

We had a simple but specific process in place to have our high school and middle school students sign up for our physical exams. We had been planning, communicating with coaches and pushing out the broadcast in many different ways for weeks leading up to our event. Still, the final result of numbers was more than disappointing. We had such a small percentage of our student athletes that needed physicals actually take advantage of what we offered.

We do this for a few benefits, primarily being cheap and convenient for busy parents and athletes. The goal of hosting PPE’s is to help complete a significant portion of our population’s medical paperwork requirements in a timely manner. It is also a benefit to have our high quality physicians helping. Then we as athletic trainers are immediately aware of the “red flag” positive medical findings and are able to address the next steps with the parents in a timely manner.

After all our efforts of communication, we still didn’t have the back-up we needed from the coaches to get the kids/parents to sign up. For many, following instructions to complete the sign-up was a struggle. Regardless of how many actually come, we put the same amount of time and effort into the details of orchestrating and setting up the event. The nicest way to sum up our event was a BIG hassle with very little outcome. On top of it all there are now many local clinics that offer “cheap and easy” sports physical exams with extended night and weekend hours available. Parents often jump to these options anyways. So, it brings me to ask, was it really worth it? Do we do this again next year?

Consistent with the recommendations of the NATA’s Safe Sports School Award (link below, check it out!!), I feel athletic trainers are responsible to coordinate PPE’s. However, we do this as we communicate to parents how to fulfill the PPE requirements and as we diligently collect the paperwork to ensure that each athlete has completed this and has the necessary medical information on file. From my perspective this does not mean that we are not adequately doing our jobs if we do not host a physical exam event at our school. If you’re a secondary school AT have you had similar struggle hosting PPE’s? Do you feel pressure to provide physicals at your school?

http://www.nata.org/sites/default/files/SafeSportSchoolAwardPacket.pdf

District VI memories

Recently, SWATA announced the election results, and welcomed Chris Hall as the new district director.  We also saw Valerie Hairston named to her second term as the Member-At-Large, and Lorna Strong as the Eddie Wojeki recipient.  What an awesome group of candidates and award winners!

I had the pleasure of working as a student under Chris Hall at TCU.  He has such a passion for the profession, and his love for the work we do truly shows.  Texas and Arkansas have been able to do so many things on both the state and local level, and I look forward to everything that we will do in the future. 

As we creep towards the July meeting, I wanted to take some time to reflect on all the work Kathy Dieringer has done as the District VI director.  During the 2014 convention, Kathy asked the Young Professionals’ Committee to tackle the NPI contest.  The YP’s teamed up with the PR, CUATC, and COPA committees to increase both awareness and on-site NPI registrations.  As committee chair, I was thankful for Kathy reaching out and trusting me with this initiative.  I know there are many stories out there just like mine- District VI what are some of your memories of working alongside Kathy?