Athletic Trainers' Facilitators of Professional Commitment in the Collegiate Setting

Abstract

Context: Professional responsibility, rewards and respect, and time for rejuvenation are factors supporting professional commitment for athletic trainers (ATs) in the high school setting. The inherent complexities of an occupational setting can mitigate perceptions of professional commitment. Thus far, evidence is lacking regarding professional commitment for ATs in other occupational settings.Objective: To extend the literature on professional commitment of the AT to 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 used to collect data from all participants. Two strategies, multiple-analyst triangulation and peer review, were completed to satisfy data credibility. Data were evaluated using a general inductive approach.Results: Likert-scale data revealed no differences regarding levels of professional commitment across divisions. Two themes emerged from the inductive-content analysis: (1) professional responsibility and (2) coworker support. The emergent theme of professional responsibility contained 4 subthemes: (1) dedication to advancing the athletic training profession, (2) ardor for job responsibilities, (3) dedication to the student-athlete, and (4) commitment to education. Our participants were able to better maintain their own professional commitment when they felt their coworkers were also committed to the profession.Conclusions: The collegiate ATs investigated in this study, regardless of division, demonstrated professional commitment propelled by their aspiration to advance the profession, as well as their dedication to student-athletes and athletic training students. Maintaining commitment was influenced by a strong sense of coworker support.Key Words: learning, professional responsibility, support Key PointsCollegiate athletic trainers were internally motivated and professionally committed to their roles as health care providers. Their professional commitment was propelled by their aspiration to advance the profession, dedication to studentathletes and athletic training students, and the value they placed on education.

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

“…The methods used in our study of collegiate ATs' perspectives on professional commitment were substantially the same as those previously described in Eason et al 17 We selected qualitative methods to allow participants to articulate their personal experiences and opinions related to their professional commitment. The paradigm was necessary to fully understand the concept of professional commitment because commitment is an individual concept and because the data within athletic training are limited.…”

The Role of Personality in Job Satisfaction Among Collegiate Athletic Trainers

“…Previous research [45][46][47] on professional commitment of ATs has shown that individuals in this profession are highly intrinsically motivated. Perhaps this motivation is a manifestation of certain personality traits common to ATs.…”

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.…”