Context: Certified athletic trainers (ATs) working at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I level experience challenges balancing their professional and personal lives. However, an understanding of the strategies ATs use to promote a balance between their professional and personal lives is lacking.Objective: To identify the strategies ATs employed in the Division I setting use to establish a balance between their professional and personal lives.Design: Qualitative investigation using inductive content analysis.Setting: Athletic trainers employed at Division I schools from 5 National Athletic Trainers' Association districts.Patients or Other Participants: A total of 28 (15 women, 13 men) ATs aged 35 6 9 years volunteered for the study.Data Collection and Analysis: Asynchronous electronic interviews with follow-up phone interviews. Data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Peer review, member checking, and datasource triangulation were conducted to establish trustworthiness.Results: Three higher-order themes emerged from the analysis. The initial theme, antecedents of work-family conflict, focused on the demands of the profession, flexibility of work schedules, and staffing patterns as contributing to work-life conflict for this group of ATs. The other 2 emergent higher-order themes, professional factors and personal factors, describe the components of a balanced lifestyle. The second-order theme of constructing the professional factors included both organizational policies and individual strategies, whereas the secondorder theme of personal factors was separation of work and life and a supportive personal network.Conclusions: Long work hours, lack of control over work schedules, and unbalanced athlete-to-AT ratios can facilitate conflicts. However, as demonstrated by our results, several organizational and personal strategies can be helpful in creating a balanced lifestyle.Key Words: work-family conflict, organizational support, professional satisfaction Key Points N Although professional demands, inflexible work schedules, and inadequate staffing patterns can cause conflicts, work-life balance is achievable for athletic trainers at the Division I level.N To promote work-life balance, administrators should encourage teamwork, and athletic trainers can set boundaries and priorities.N A strong support system, both at work and at home, is the critical link that allows athletic trainers to balance their professional and personal lives.

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Context: Work-family conflict (WFC) negatively affects a professional's ability to function at work or home.Objective: To examine perceptions of and contributing factors to WFC among secondary school athletic trainers.Design: Sequential explanatory mixed-methods study. Setting: Secondary school.Patients or Other Participants: From a random sample of 1325 individuals selected from the National Athletic Trainers' Association Member Services database, 415 individuals (203 women, 212 men; age 5 36.8 6 9.3 years) provided usable online survey data. Fourteen individuals participated in follow-up interviews.Intervention(s): Online WFC questionnaire followed by indepth phone interviews.Main Outcome Measure(s): Descriptive statistics were obtained to examine perceived WFC. Pearson product moment correlations were calculated to examine the relationship between work hours, total athletic training staff, and number of children and WFC score. We performed analysis of variance to examine differences between the independent variables of sex and control over work schedule and the dependent variable of WFC score. The a priori a was set at P # .05. Qualitative data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Multiple-analyst triangulation and member checks established trustworthiness of the qualitative data.Results: Mean WFC scores were 23.97 6 7.78 for scale 1 (family defined as having a partner or spouse with or without children) and 23.17 6 7.69 for scale 2 (family defined as individuals, including parents, siblings, grandparents, and any other close relatives, involved in one's life), indicating moderate perceived WFC. A significant relationship was found between the average hours of work per week and WFC scores: those with less scheduling control experienced more WFC. Two dimensions emerged from the qualitative methods that relate to how WFC is mitigated in the secondary school environment: (1) organizational-having colleagues and administration that understood the role demands and allowed for modifications in schedule and personal time and (2) personaltaking time for oneself and having a family that understands the work demands of an athletic trainer resulted in reduced perceived WFC.Conclusions: A large number of work hours per week and lack of control over work schedules affected the perceived level of WFC.Key Words: work-family interface, work-family balance, role conflict Key Points N Work-family conflict is experienced by athletic trainers in the secondary school setting, regardless of sex, family situation, or the number of children.N Organizational support from administrators and coaches was perceived to help balance work and family obligations. N Taking time for oneself and having a family that understands the athletic trainer's work demands also reduced work-family conflict.

doi: 10.4085/1062-6050-47.4.08 Ó by the National Athletic Trainers ’ Association, Inc www.nata.org/journal-of-athletic-training consensus statemen

Context: Athletic trainers (ATs) know to diagnose exertional heat stroke (EHS) via rectal thermometry (T re ) and to treat EHS via cold-water immersion (CWI) but do not implement these recommendations in clinical practice.Objective: To gain an understanding of educational techniques used to deliver content regarding EHS.Design: Qualitative study. Setting: In-person focus groups at the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) Annual Meeting in June 2009 and 2 follow-up telephone interviews to confirm emergent themes.Patients or Other Participants: Thirteen AT educators (11 men, 2 women) from programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education, with an average of 22 ± 9 years of clinical experience and 16 ± 10 years of experience as educators. Five NATA districts were represented.Data Collection and Analysis: Data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Peer review and data source triangulation also were conducted to establish trustworthiness.Results: Four themes emerged from the analysis: educational techniques, educational competencies, previous educational training, and privacy/public opinion. Educational techniques highlighted the lack of hands-on training for T re and CWI. Educational competencies referred to the omission of T re and CWI as psychomotor skills. Previous educational training addressed educators not having the skills or comfort with the skills necessary to properly educate students. Privacy/public opinion comprised external inputs from various groups (parents and coaches), legal considerations, and social bias. Conclusions: Educators supplied students with the appropriate didactic knowledge about EHS, but their lack of training and misgivings about T re prevented them from allowing students to gain competence with this skill. Until the NATA competencies state the need to teach T re and CWI and until educators are provided with their own learning opportunities, evidence-based practice regarding EHS will be lacking.Key Words: education, exertion, rectal temperature, coldwater immersion, qualitative research Key Points• Previous experiences and training influenced the teaching practices of athletic training educators.• Hands-on training is necessary for skill competence and confidence with temperature assessment.• Teaching methods must match course and lesson objectives to be effective.