It's easy, as a young professional athletic trainer, to get caught up in the daily grind. Our days are full of early morning treatments followed by paperwork and other administrative duties, after which, we spend time rehabbing with our more significantly injured athletes. During the afternoon, we "triage" during athletic periods and put in some time educating our athletic training student aides. Then, we spend several hours attending after school practices, finally finishing up with post-practice treatments. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how busy we get. We all have our own stories of work "craziness" that, while different, are also so similar.
Personally, I love the craziness (or as I like to describe it, the controlled chaos). But sometimes, I find myself forgetting about the person I am treating. In the busy-ness of the day, I treat injuries but miss the fact that the owner of the injury I am treating is a person who is dealing with much more than just this injury.
A fact that I was brutally reminded of this morning.
This morning, my daily grind was interrupted. Rather than work on paperwork or continue rehab with a couple of athletes, I attended a funeral. It was the funeral of a mother of two of my athletes, a woman I barely knew other than to put a name with a face. Attending this funeral was not for my benefit, but to show support for two boys who were now parentless (They had lost their father when they were very young). As I stood at this funeral among a number of my other athletes who had also taken the time to show support, I was struck by two thoughts. One- I should pray for these two boys and two- what else is going on in the lives of all these other kids?
There are many reasons why I became an athletic trainer. But, one of the biggest reasons I was drawn to this profession is because we have the opportunity to develop relationships with our patients/athletes. In my opinion, if we are strictly treating an injury, we are only doing part of our job. As an athletic trainer, we are in a unique position to invest in the life of our patient. We are both privileged to celebrate their successes and responsible to help guide them through their failures. We are available to meet needs, great or small, and to bestow wisdom where we can.
Tomorrow, I'm sure I will, once again, get busy. But, hopefully, just once, I will remember that I am treating more than just an injury. I'm treating a whole person.
1 comment:
So true Beth! I am so sorry for their loss, but I am sure it took a small part of the sting away knowing so many people were there to support them. My running joke lately is that all athletic trainers should be required to get a psychology minor because of all of the "other" things we deal with. The chair in my office becomes a venting point for many of my athletes, but I take pride in the fact they trust me with their feelings. I agree that we are in a unique situation to know things beyond the injury and the name, and we can use that to support, encourage and inspire our athletes, coaches, co-workers and ourselves!
All the best,
Valerie
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