Collaborative Mental Health Care in Collegiate Athletics: Behavioral Health Providers’ Perceived Role of the Athletic Trainer

Abstract

Context Developing effective interprofessional teams is vital to achieving quality care for those dealing with behavioral health concerns. Athletic trainers (ATs) play a vital role as they are often the first healthcare provider to interact with student-athletes participating in intercollegiate athletics. However, research regarding how behavioral health providers view the AT's role on interprofessional behavioral health teams is limited. Objective To explore behavioral health providers' perceived role of ATs in collaborative behavioral healthcare. Design Qualitative. Setting Individual interviews. Patients or Other Participants Nine behavioral healthcare providers (women=6, men=3; age range=30–59 years, years in clinical practice=6–25 years) from NCAA Power 5 schools were interviewed. Data Collection and Analysis Participants were contacted via publicly available contact information from their university websites. Participants engaged in an individual, audio-only interview using a commercially available teleconferencing platform. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and returned to participants for member checking. A phenomenological approach with inductive coding and multi-analyst triangulation was performed to analyze the transcripts for common themes and sub-themes. Results Three themes emerged: (1) provider experience, (2) AT's role in behavioral health, and (3) collaboration. Provider experience included sub-themes of formal education and interaction with ATs. Sub-themes of an AT's role included care coordination, information gathering, and positive proximity. Sub-themes for collaboration included structural collaboration, cultural collaboration, collaboration concerns, and suggestions for ideal collaboration. Conclusions Collaborative care models can enhance providers' ability and maximize support of student-athlete wellness. This study demonstrates that behavioral health providers working within a collaborative care model with ATs have overall positive experiences with such collaboration, and that clear role delineation and responsibilities help to foster high-quality patient care.