Athletic Trainers' Barriers to Maintaining Professional Commitment in the Collegiate Setting

Abstract

Context: Professional commitment simply describes one's obligation to his or her work. For athletic trainers (ATs), the demanding work environment and job expectations may affect their characterization of professional commitment. Our breadth of knowledge regarding professional commitment within athletic training is narrow.Objective: To evaluate the professional commitment of ATs in the collegiate setting.Design: Qualitative study. Setting: Collegiate.Patients or Other Participants: Thirty-three Board of Certification-certified ATs employed in the collegiate setting (National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I ¼ 11, Division II ¼ 9, Division III ¼ 13) with an average of 10 6 8 years of clinical experience volunteered. Data saturation guided the total number of participants.Data Collection and Analysis: Online journaling via QuestionPro was completed by all participants. Multiple-analyst triangulation and peer review were conducted for data credibility. Analysis followed a general inductive method.Results: Four themes speak to the factors that negatively affect ATs' professional enthusiasm and commitment: (1) life stage, (2) work overload, (3) organizational climate, and (4) human resources. The latter 3 speak to the effect the workplace can have on ATs' professional commitment, and the first speaks to the effect outside responsibilities can have.Conclusions: Our results suggest that several of the factors that negatively influence the professional commitment of collegiate ATs are modifiable organizational components. Developing resiliency strategies at the individual and organizational levels may help to facilitate improved professional commitment for the AT.Key Words: resiliency, organizational climate, role overload Key PointsProfessional commitment describes one's emotional attachment to a profession, the sense of obligation to the profession, and the cost : benefit perception of departure from the profession. The professional commitments of collegiate athletic trainers were negatively affected by their life stage, work overload, organizational climate, and human resources. Work overload, organizational climate, and human resources are components that can be addressed at the organizational level to facilitate work-life balance and enhance professional commitment.

Maintaining Professional Commitment as a Newly Credentialed Athletic Trainer in the Secondary School Setting

“…10 We have a strong understanding of professional commitment within the collegiate setting but minimal knowledge of same in the secondary school setting. 16,17 However, commitment in the secondary school setting is important to understand, as this setting has emerged as the most popular choice for employment, and many newly credentialed ATs seek employment there. Moreover, many states have changed medical coverage policies in the secondary school setting and require an AT's employment or, at minimum, presence during athletic competitions.…”

Examining the Experiences of Athletic Trainers as they transition into their First Full-Time Position

“…This allowed these participants and their coworkers extra personal time for rejuvenation, a facilitator to individuals' professional commitment, as discussed in the literature. 35,37 Other participants enjoyed WLB practices by means of support from their supervisors. This included formal policies, like mandatory off days or personal hours worked into the schedule each day, and less formal ones like attention given to athletic trainers' WLB needs by their supervisors, sometimes providing early closing days.…”

“…A grasp of the affective and continuance components of professional commitment was most apparent in this group of participants. [35][36][37] Several of them outwardly weighed their passion for patient care interaction with the strain on their personal life, reaching a conclusion that departure from the profession or setting may be imminent. We found this to be mostly consistent with Kahanov's and Eberman's 4 suggestion of life stage in relation to workfamily conflict as a potential cause of departure from the profession and change in employment settings.…”

Athletic Trainers' Facilitators of Professional Commitment in the Collegiate Setting

“…The central focus of this study was to identify the positive influences affecting professional commitment for ATs working in the collegiate setting. A separate article 12 discusses the negative aspects of professional commitment. The following central research questions guided this investigation:…”