Episode 6: Progressing with Passion - Increasing Workforce Retention in AT, Featuring Special Guest, Jamie Hart

Leadership within athletic training encompasses more than injury management—it involves establishing standards, motivating colleagues, and advocating for a profession that positively impacts countless lives. Our guest, Jamie Hart, DPT, PT, AT, who oversees athletic trainers at University Hospitals, shares his approaches to addressing workforce retention amid current challenges affecting the field. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello and welcome to the practical team podcast. I'm your host of Mulk and Cork. Good to hear you. Uh we have a good episode for all the cutting, but I I think this one comes to the forest one because today we have a Jimmy Cart. Uh Jimmy Hart from we will be going over uh the uh the have a workforce discussion within uh the athletic training profession. So that is the elephant in the room and has been the elephant in the room for a little bit. So uh I think it's important to discuss this, especially when uh we're going into National Athletic Training Month. So uh we just uh we're gonna just have a discussion about it. So uh Jamie, go ahead and introduce yourself, go ahead and and talk a little bit about uh your background, your experience, and your your current role.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Thanks so much, Scott, for uh inviting me on the podcast. Uh I really appreciate it. Um like you said, my name is Jamie Hart. I'm administrator for uh the Drzensky Sports Medicine Institute and the University Hospitals in Cleveland, and you know we oversee um or have partnerships with about 70 high schools and colleges across Northeast Ohio. Um a couple of large clinical practices that we oversee as well, and also have an athletic trainer in in the industrial setting. So we really touch um a lot of aspects of the workforce um in athletic training. Um I've been an athletic trainer certified in 2005, uh, so for going on 21 years now. Uh I'm also a physical therapist, uh, been a PT uh since 2009, so whatever the math is there, 17 years, I guess. Um uh in kind of in all walks of different roles from uh working at the college level, uh supporting high school levels, working in clinics, both physician clinics and rehab clinics and industrial spaces. Uh so uh kind of a varied background on my side, uh spent a lot of time in leadership as well. So um workforce development is something super important to me because uh we need more athletic trainers. We've done a great job promoting our industry, and now we're reaching a point where uh there's not enough of us.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

So, what what's the current pulse out there? What are you seeing as a manager within uh athletic training and running this you know, co-running a sports medicine department? What are you seeing?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Well, you know, what we're seeing is just the demand for more um being put on the at on the shoulders of our athletic trainer. Every school wants more time from the athletic trainer. Every school that doesn't have an athletic trainer wants one, of course. Uh and and you know, I'm supportive of that as well. But a lot of schools are are saying, you know, we need our athletic trainer to be here more or to be at more events, to be at more practices. Uh we need another person if possible. And those are are challenges that are really difficult for us to meet, obviously, because there's a finite number of us. And as you know, we start seeing the evolution of of the profession, um, you know, more and more students as they're graduating are you know being very upfront where they want to step into a clinical role. You know, back when I started in the dark ages, a long time ago, but um you know, all of us sort of thought, well, if we ever get to work in a clinical setting, that that would be a great kind of cherry on top. You know, it would be a wonderful way to work through your career. But everyone kind of knew that they were working at the high school or college setting. I I did an interview with uh someone that was getting ready to graduate here in May. They've already sat for a BOC exam, they passed their exam, it was very exciting. The the first phrase he said to me was, I'm really looking for a clinical role. I I prefer not to start in the high school or in the college. And I thought, hmm. That's kind of counter to everything that we've always sort of talked about. So uh that's that's a little bit more of a challenge. Um, with increased demand from our customers and rising expectations from our new graduates, we we're kind of stuck in the middle of um not enough people wanting to do the core work of our career. Um and that's that's a challenge that we're trying to work through. And and um I think we have some unique, or not unique so much, but creative solutions that we're working towards to try to make it better for all of our staff.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Okay. And uh so just looking at some of the uh the data that's out there, uh, but the U.S. uh Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there were about 33,900 athletic training jobs in 2024, with a projected growth of 11% through 2034. That's faster than average, but really there's despite this projected growth, there are still declines or pressure in specific settings for high school college, and that's exactly that's exactly what you're calling the pressure. The pressure still is roles, the pressure and the position of uh then just like the example that you brought up regarding the the the interview that you have uh you know not starting within the high school setting or just doing more of a critical role. Um is that is that something uh I guess that you're seeing a lot with with new grades. I mean, I think when we look at it the profession in general uh over the last 30 years or so, we've definitely expanded into uh you know, we'll say the emergent settings, but right now they're they're more or less uh established settings, but we we've seen that. Um but for the most part, uh it it seems like there's doubt that that has to go in that direction. Um when really we we need a lot more of these these positions to be filled. Do you see anything that's happening within the education education-wise, or what what do you think is is going on here? Uh that's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Um, and and we're working to try to identify exactly what's going on here. I I I I wish I had a better response, but but I I think it's multi it's multifaceted, right, in a lot of ways. So I I don't think anyone is trying to actively steer the athletic training students away from uh the high schools or the college settings. However, um, you know, I I think all of us know an athletic trainer that works in the high school setting, maybe is a little disgruntled with their job, or maybe they're their employer, or you know, they're sometimes have a rough thing, and maybe there are times that we don't always portray our profession in in a way to those high school athletes, and then those high school athletes think, oh, it'd be great to be an athletic trainer. But I remember what happened to you know, my athletic trainer in high school. Maybe she was a bit happier if she was in a different setting, and maybe that's the way I want to go as well. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 7:47

That kind of situation.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

And so I think sometimes um we have to think about you know, how are we presenting our profession to those around us by our own actions, right? Um I think most athletic trainers love the career of athletic training because we have a lot of knowledge, we get a lot do a lot of different things, we get to encounter a lot of different scenarios, but there are some dregs too, right? There are some things that are really difficult to work through. Um, and so you have to take the bad with the good, of course, but sometimes, and and this isn't everyone, and this isn't all the time by any means. I don't want to portray it that way either, but there are times I think all of us could um you know have maybe responded in a way to a game being added or you know, a request being made, and maybe we you know didn't necessarily handle it the best way. I uh I know I've done that before in my own career, but um it's I I've had to work with some folks on my own staff um at their different high schools to say, you know, maybe let's not have that type of reaction around the high school kids because again, we want to try to create interest in our our field. We have a wonderful career. Are there challenges? Certainly, but this is a pretty awesome uh career to be in uh in a lot of ways. And so I think for us to do as much as we can to promote it to the young people, um, those high school athletes we're gonna work with, those college athletes that we get to work with, um that's only that can only help us in the future for you know developing the workforce for sure. And that's not to mention that folks that are working in physician clinics and rehab clinics and industrial settings. I mean, it it's it's widespread, but I want to make sure we impact the young people in a way that they're growing in interest and you know taking on these roles.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah, I mean, uh yeah, exactly. Um Taylor, what what what are your thoughts? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

No, I mean, God bless. I when you start saying, you know, hey, you know, we're you know, discussing uh apply training, us kind of winning it out in front of the students. Um I do also like it to an extent as well because it becomes a little bit realistic for you know, if an outlet team or students coming in or um you know, shadowing, I think making more realistic expectations, and maybe that's what's happening nowadays. Um, I think a lot of the certifies are actually saying, hey, this is a reality. To a lot of students, but I will say I was on a panel um last year and a lot of the athletic teenagers in the master's program were more interested in coming into uh high school athletics, which I thought was pretty cool. Um, a large number. And I think I know when I talk to a lot of student athletic teens, I tell them go to high school first. You know, so you can't build up that experience first before you jump right into industrial or right into emerging settings. Because it's always good to have some background and insight. Um, because I know in the industrial setting, you know, if you're not honest, if you're not you know, being real or know or have that confidence piece, a lot of the industrial athletes can smell that and they're like, Well, what are you trying to do here? So I think going into the high school setting just to build up your confidence and experience before going into other settings is huge as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Oh, I agree with you a thousand percent, Taylor. I I think you know, you learn so much when you're on your own, working independently as an athletic trainer at the outreach setting, regardless of of what specific location it is, knowing that the buck really stops with you whenever you have to make a decision. Everyone's looking to you to help manage that emergency. It you grow so much as a professional in that first you know three to five years, it's it's really exponential. Um and so it's uh you know, I I think those settings you learn so much, and not that you don't learn a lot in other settings as well, but it makes you a better clinician whenever you get to those more emergent emerging settings uh as an athletic trainer, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Now, one question I'm interested in is just because you know it is COPA, um, and you're in a unique position. Now, since you guys do have the outreach program and you also have the clinical, um, you know, how are you guys collecting your metrics and your data for the outreach setting, or if you guys are held to that standard of trying to bring some athletes into the clinical, um, or how you guys are advocating for the sports medicine program to the higher-ups? Because I know that's always a big thing you're having to you know justify to the CFO or the CEO of the sports med program.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Sure. Um we work through all the time. Um, so you know, I'm very, very fortunate. Uh we have an an incredible physician leader um at in our department, Dr. James Voos, who is a leader surgically uh across the field. He's currently the president of the NFLPS as well. University Hospitals is the official medical provider for the Cleveland Browns, and so we have a lot of support from uh Dr. Voos and a lot of buy-in from senior leadership at our hospital system because of him. But along with that, um, you know, yes, we track referrals and and whatnot, but we don't track it so much to see what the return on investment is from our athletic training standpoint. We we do do it as a community benefit at the schools, however, you know, we've experienced exponential growth over the last 10 years um at our uh in our hospital uh on the sports medicine side, and it's it's proven out because all our every year we have to add another physician just to keep up with the volume growth. Um so we're seeing it on the volume side of our sports medicine clinics and the need to add more positions, you know, positions or or you know, advanced practice providers as well. Um that's really where we're seeing a lot of um the business side, the revenue side. You know, we track a lot more in the clinics as we than we do on the outreach side specifically. But um, you know, it's something that I have to keep an eye on for sure. The other thing we do a lot of is you know trying to build positive community partnerships. Um so you know, I I'm out going to our school, talking to our flight directors, talking to our superintendents, our principals, just trying to kind of maintain that very positive image of our hospital system with those in the community. And I think in doing so, that helps them think of us first. Obviously, where we're located, we have a a very giant and very well-respected competitor as well. And so um, there's a lot of athletes to go around for sure, thankfully, but we're doing everything we can to make sure that our schools that we take care of, we're their first choice to to come um for for care. Um, and and we do that a lot of ways. And one way by trying to employ more of a concierge type um approach from the clinical side to our athletic trainers. Um, do our athletic trainers have the ability to make appointments? Yes, they do. Do we expect them to make all the appointments? Absolutely not. They're very busy with other I I I would never expect one of our athletic trainers who's working solo at a high school football game to be on the sideline trying to make an appointment for a Saturday morning clinic or for a Monday clinic um while there's a game going on, right? That's ridiculous to think that that's even possible. Uh so while they have the ability to make appointments, we certainly don't expect them to make um even half of the appointment. But they have someone to go to to make those appointments for them at the drop of a hat. So that that helps take a little bit of the burden off of them and allows their athletes to get in you know as soon as possible, which is typically same day, next day for us. Our our doctors pride themselves on on taking on if we have an athlete at a high school that gets hurt, they want to see that kid right away. Um and and they we truly model our high school approach after our approach for the professional teams we take care of.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

You know, we think every athlete's important. Um our tagline is taking care of you from pre from pee-wee to pro. Um, and so we we try to employ that message across the across the board.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Yeah, I mean that's a really good point. And i it actually segues into the the next part of of this discussion, which is focused on on burnout, and that's a huge part of workforce retention, but it seems like that's that's essentially like one of your strategies that you have uh implemented uh to reduce burnout and to reduce turn uh turnover within the profession. Um so I don't know if you have any like uh or anything like that, but uh you find that taking the burden off um athletic trainers and you know having different clinics and stuff like that, that you find this has been helpful to reduce you know the immense workload that you that uh that the professionals face, and you know, from that aspect are you having a a less you know uh burnout reported?

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Uh we we do an annual uh engagement survey for across all the settings, not just inside the hospital, but um university hospitals are a huge employer. So we do an employee engagement survey every year. And our last survey uh was done in July. The window for all of our staff to take it was like the middle of July through the first week of August. So if you think about that time frame for an athletic trainer, um most of them are gearing up, prepping for the season, and then August 1st rolls around and now they're working 16 hours a day. Pretty tough, uh tough time frame. Fortunately, our staff recorded back to us and and we take these surveys very, very seriously. We had our best engagement scores we've ever had as a system um in our department. It was a tremendous year for us. And and our scores have always been shorts have been very high. We have a very engaged staff, we have a very good staff, and our and a pretty tenured staff for that matter, for that matter as well. Um but the average years of experience um and time with the company on and our staff is right around that uh nine, ten year mark. So we had really good luck with with people staying in the profession, staying employed with us and and being happy with us, which is great. But our um engagement surveys were very high. Our overall engagement score was over 95% uh for satisfaction. The question was uh how satisfied are you to work with? Across our staff of 80 plus at trainers, our total average was 95 plus. I think it's pretty good. I think what we've done to help uh reduce that burnout feeling from them. Uh a couple of the strategies we've we've employed with a staff excuse me. A staff at side, people can feel like they're on an island sometimes as an athlete trainer, right? We try to bring them together and do reach models and make sure that people are getting entries to other folks in their area so they feel connected with with each other and I mentor a team to uh groups of athlete trainers as well. So with with you know points that they need to try to achieve uh on a routine basis as well, where they're they're having you know frequent touch points with with their uh assigned mentees as well. But those those programs have really helped us a lot.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yeah, I mean that's amazing that you have that uh that in place. Um have you have you presented that anywhere, particularly with at conferences? Because I think that would be a good topic of discussion regarding that work workforce uh uh retention.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Um honestly I we've not, and the reason is because uh I kind of want to see it one more year. Uh I'd like to see a three-year trend of it being before I uh before I I think that I'm really patting myself on the back because go sideways and I don't want to put the cart before the horse. I'm very thankful that we have the staff we have and we have the engaged the engagement of the staff that we have. But at the same time, I I want to keep the onus on me and and my fellow leaders to make sure that we're doing everything we can to take care of our staff so that they can do their best work.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Do you feel like the the the the the compensation um slash workload, you know, has been an issue? Have you seen that as far as retention is concerned?

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Uh certainly. Um so I I would say the the workload um has been an issue in the past, yes. And the pay has been an issue in the past. Very so on both sides. Um I'll address the pay side first. So um I think across the board uh for athlete trainers lagging behind other allied health professions, right? And and so we in an effort to make sure that our athlete trainers felt valued and recognized that we value them, not just as employees but as people, we we did an un did undergo a pretty large scale um compensation uh initiative so that we could increase compensation appropriately for those that were really lagging behind. Um and and And also make sure that we are kind of on the leading edge of the pace uh you know of the marketplace uh in the area. I'm not gonna say we pay the very, very best of all the uh systems across the region, but I think we at least have a very fair standard and our and also with the new grads coming out, we recognize, you know, if you look at some of the NCAA data and what schools are trying to pay entry-level athlete trainers, it's disgusting, honestly. I I don't have another word for it, unfortunately. Um, but I feel like with the education and what they're coming in with now and the amount of debt that we know that it's very fair to we we've really worked hard to raise that minimum or that entry level rate for us. Um I don't think I'm allowed to share it. Uh but I tell you that it's very competitive, and I've never had a candidate turn us down because of the pain. Um so that's that's something that we take very, very seriously.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

So what would you what would you say to someone, you know, say for instance, a you know, a leader, athletic training leader, a sports master manager of another company, they're listening to this, and you know, what would you how would you say, and they say, oh well, we want to get these these salaries up, what would be that that first step um to accomplish sorry, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

We we did it by showing the um the amount of young referrals that were coming into the clinic, not from the high school side specifically. Look at all the new patient data that you have in your EMR systems inside the system, and how many of those are high school age patients or college-age patients in our case as well. And when you look at that data and you see, you know, exponential growth over a period of 10 years, we had a pretty strong case that the reason that was happening is because we have athlete trainers at the school. Yes, when someone gets hurt, they have some they have to go somewhere, right? But when you see, you know, um take for example, one of our markets, we have, I think, eight hospitals in our system, and one of our markets did not have a sports medicine physician or a sports focused orthopedic surgeon uh for a very long time. We uh put a sports medicine physician in place um after we had already put athlete trainers in the high schools in that around that hospital. Um at first those athlete trainers like we have no one to refer to, and our kids want to go somewhere local. So, you know, they were kind of floundering for a while where they didn't have someone to refer to. As soon as we put the position and then a sports-focused orthopedic surgeon in this market, you know, somewhat locally for them, those two positions, their schedules just got hacked. They were those two are through the roof now with uh volume, um to the point where we've had to look at how we supplement them. Uh and that was over a five-year period. Um, it it was pretty incredible when you look back at what the data was when they stated, obviously they were zero, so um, and then when they started to where they're at now was just a huge um increase. And so you really have to look if if you're at a large system or even a smaller system, if you have there's a lot of capabilities within our uh clinical EMR systems that will allow you to look at that you know demographic data to see where people are coming from, what their ages are, you know, you you can really do a lot of work in that regard. And that's what we've done. You know, we'll break it down by zip code if we need to age ranges of the patients to see, you know, who's coming and specifically where are they coming from to each one of our our uh physician office locations.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

It all comes back to that that data. Uh, before I move on to uh workload or anything uh associated with it, Taylor, do you have anything else to add up regarding pay and what we've been discussing?

SPEAKER_00 26:27

No, I mean I think that's awesome. And I know you brought up earlier, you know, things going uphill. It sounds like you got a great thing coming downhill too, a lot of support from the higher-ups, which you know, and when you have buy-in from the upstairs, it trickles down and clearly it's showing with what you guys are doing. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

We're very, very fortunate. Very strong physician leadership. Um, we you know, we we have an annual meeting uh for all of our staff to attend, and our physicians will attend it as well with us. And uh every year, it's a broken record at this point. There's been so many times, but it's heartfelt and sincere. And you know, he always says, I can't do what I do it unless you do what you do. And we can't do any of this without each other. Um, it also helps that all of our physicians that we work with also come and and support us on the sidelines as well, just like our Athlete training recovering games on Friday nights. If they have a a you know, a team that's making a run through the tournament, you know, the state tournaments or whatever, you know, you will frequently see one of them pop in just to you know go and support their their assigned team, uh, which is which is nice. But you know, they're they like to say they practice medicine with their feet in the grass, not not in the OR, not just in the clinic, so it's nice.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah. Um so yeah, I mean, so we're looking at a lot of these different elements. You know, we're looking at the burnout, which you know, we've had a discussion. We've we've looked at at pay. Um, another thing, a big thing that always comes up is is gonna be the workload. And you know, there's been a ton of of of surveys that have gone out uh research um regarding the workload, but uh one of the more recent ones uh indicated that uh content athletic trainers are basically carrying for fifty uh well, 50% of these uh athletic trainers that responded to the survey are caring for a hundred percent a hundred plus uh hundred or more student athletes without paying creatures. Um and then 65% have other responsibilities without compensation. And well, this is just uh a collegiate the collegiate setting that's someone you know, I would like to at least bring on someone in the in the um I guess in the the future regarding the uh the collegiate setting. But when we look at the workload associated, uh especially with like uh well these larger high schools, um we kind of got into it a little bit uh but uh do you have uh you know uh do you have your AT talking about the the the immense workload or do you have you kind of said about mentorship or is that one of the strategies, especially for younger athletic trainers that are overwhelmed with you know a long long large workload? Um is there anything else that you you implement to help cut down on on that? I know we've talked about a little bit, but is there anything else that you um that you have?

SPEAKER_02 29:39

No, I'm happy to ask because I I I wanted to get into that a little bit. So yeah, so our the mentorship program is certainly most helpful for those newer athletic trainers that you know it's very easy to get overwhelmed whenever you you're fresh out and and you're experiencing these things for the first time, right? Um so you know, we've had some of our mentor athletic trainers go, you know, hang out of the game um or an after-school period with their uh mentees if they can. All of our mentors are also working with their own high schools as well. So um trying not to overload them either, but at the same time, you know, just them being able to provide provide some level of support to their mentees, their newer staff is super helpful. The other thing we've tried to do, we've expanded we've actually hired a handful of athletic trainers to work in kind of a quote unquote float role. So they're not officially assigned to one high school. Um their job is to really see where the need is. Um we have a you know large daily uh you know email that goes out with you know what what who needs help where, basically. Um, and regionally your relationships, you you know kind of know which schools are gonna need more help and where they're gonna need the help at, right? We have the these you know groups of athletic trainers that we say, hey, if if there's report to X high school, um, but your job is to support this region as opposed to one school all the time. Help significantly. Um we encourage our staff to take time off. We we encourage them to use their PTO. Now, I prefer they not use their PTO on a Friday night. But I I have had some do that when they need it to, whether you know whether they're going out of town for a wedding or something's going on. We don't stop them from doing those things. People need to live their life, right? They they have to live a life outside of work. And so we really uh we we're fortunate in the respect that across our system, it's not just recording to me. I have, you know, we have about 85 athlete trainers that report through the outreach branch of um our department. But if you include all of the athlete trainers in the physician clinics and all the athlete trainers in the rehab clinics, some of them are dual certified as PTs or PTAs or EMTs. We we also worked with our EMT department or EMS department, I should say. Um we have about 125 athlete trainers in total in our system, and we offer them the opportunity to help our outreach staff out as well with an incentive program. So, you know, even if those folks are salaried, we have a way to incentivize them to come help us out, which has been a huge benefit for our staff. Because again, we want people to take time off if they need to take time off. We want them to feel supported so that they're not all alone at their school. And so, you know, having the opportunity for the clinical staff to you know pick up a little extra coin in their pocket because they went and covered it a game, you know, during the week or on the weekend that that helps everybody out, right? It's it's really beneficial. So we also allow our athletic trainers in the high school setting. So say they have a a weekend off and somebody else needs help, we'll offer them that same incentive to go pick up that other event. Now, we don't force it on them because we don't want them to feel burned out, but when you put an incentive out there, then some folks are more willing to pick up. And and again, it's not the expectation, but the opportunity is there, and the opportunity means a lot to a lot of folks. Um, so it's it's about creating incentives, creating opportunities, um, to make them feel valued, to make them feel like they're supported, um, and all these things play together for sure. Now, back to the workload comment though, we have a handful of athlete trainers in the college setting. The college setting is um, especially with at the small college setting, the junior college division three, division twos, those staff, uh, when they're being hired by the colleges directly and not by a health system, the pay is pennies on the dollar for what it should be. That's a that's a major mess. I know the NCAA and the NATA put out a position statement last year about it, but it's it's truly a mess. And they unfortunately no one has stepped up to fix it. We are working with our school partners to try to help them out with that. But at the same time, um, between the workload of the college athletic trainers who are like you said, uh, I'm not surprised that survey response was they're taking care of more than a hundred student athletes um individually. I think that's the NCAA standard is you should have one athletic trainer per 100 student athlete. Not enough. We all know this, it's not enough. But that's that's the NCAA standard. And so the schools point to that and say, Oh, that's all they say we have to have, so that's all we're gonna have. Um it that's where we have experienced our greatest turnover is in the collegiate setting. And so I just really don't have that one figured out yet.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And you know, it's it's a discussion for it's its own discussion, um, especially the uh retention for collegiate athletic trainers. Uh but uh tell her anything else to add? Did I forget anything? Or keep me in line here.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Well, sometimes you keep me in line. I don't have anything I think uh again, like just like Scott said, I think uh college athletic training, that's a whole deep dive in itself because uh yeah. I talked about you to even you know bring that up and trying to deep dive that monster.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Yeah, uh yeah, so uh yeah, so we we talked about uh a lot of different things. So uh so we're really beyond salary. How how does organizational culture influence retention of athletic trainers? And you know, I'll go into another survey here. Collegiate workforce surveys highlighted organizational culture as a significant concern in addition to compensation and burnout. So uh we can't we we kind of touched upon this, but it seems like you have a pretty organized um organized area, you have a hierarchy of controls, do you feel like you have leadership within the hospital system that understands and you know uh you know uh what the profession and and the work that's uh that we do. You have any do you feel like there's any anyone that maybe within the the higher ups that has maybe needs more education, or do you feel like that has already been well established? It's taken some time, but they get it.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Uh you know, we're we're fortunate in respect that I think our senior leadership certainly um respects us and they want our change brings in the table for the system, um which is great. Uh uh it's not a battle I have to constantly fight, but of course we like to give them as many reminders as possible. Just because they just we're always you know front of mind for them. But at the same time, uh they definitely show us the respect um and and and they they show us they care. Um which is which is definitely helpful. Um I've in my career I I feel like our athlete standards have never felt as valued as they do currently. Um which is great. And I I think that comes from the top down uh of the senior leadership and the position leadership that we have. Um and and so that helps a lot.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Um of course that was not uh done overnight, uh in that case because we're getting towards the end here, but I I usually like to to wrap up with this question and uh and I I really appreciate you shared a lot of great insights, but how can we advance as a profession to uh reduce our uh the the workforce concern and retain more athletic trainers in the high school and collegiate setting? Is there anything else that any strategies that that you're implementing that you did not discuss that you would like to share about you know really advancing this profession?

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Sure. So, you know, it's it's something that that um uh is growing in the high school levels, um, where more and more high schools are offering career technical education with a focus on sports medicine and exercise science. And a number of our schools that we partner with and provide athlete training services to are continuous. Some of them have these programs already, some of them are developing these programs. And so part of what I've you know, put my efforts towards is making sure that those schools engage our athlete trainers and engage and I engage with them so that we can help build that curriculum to highlight our career and our in our professional pathway. And so again, you know, I talked about it a little bit earlier, but we want to make this our our career is a is a fantastic career, it has its challenges, but it's really a fulfilling career. And and I think as humans we want to be fulf fulfilled in life, right? And there's not a lot of things that you can do that can be quite as much fun as being an athletic trainer um while still receiving that fulfillment. And you know, I I I spent a lot of time in uh other parts of the health world as a physical therapist, I've overseen urgent cars and occupational health clinics and and all kinds of different things over the years. And the most fun and the most fulfilled that I've been is working as an athletic trainer. I really I always encourage our athletic trainers to be involved in those uh peer tech programs for the high school kids and to really try to showcase the benefits of our profession, the benefits of having a kids put it in a positive light so that we're and I said this to uh local superintendent recently who just developed uh program like this. I I said we want you to create a workforce that want to become a work and so we can take care of them once they get to us, but I need you to help us highlight why they want to be in this field and why they wanted to have this kind of creative um on the school side. And so you know, that's where I really started to kind of check myself into work uh how do we prepare our students who want to enter into this world. Um once we get them, we've done a pretty good job at least um in our area and and with our organization at including people engaged and informed and you know they're seeing the fruit of that over the course of their tenure with us. Um but we need to create as many folks entering our athlete training program as possible. You know, one of the big challenges was with the shift to the master's program, um you know, we lost a lot of athlete training education programs across the state of Ohio specifically, but also Nationwide. Um I don't have the specific numbers because I can't remember them off the top of my head um from an hour ago when I looked at them. I think we have about a third as many athlete training programs in the state of Ohio as we did 20 years ago. And they're graduating half as many athlete trainers as they were at that time. And that's a huge loss. That's so that's a huge deficit. And I know that overall um we are increasing again, and I think I I've seen that as well. But there was a huge deficit that was created, and so we're trying to build our way out of that. So I I want as many kids to enter our world as possible um into the athletic training education programs so that we can uh help create more and more athletic trainers as we continue to grow this profession.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Well said. That's that's uh that's good stuff. That's amazing. Um we still have a lot a lot of work to do, but we'll get there. You know, I think I think optimism is uh we need to be optimistic, right? We I think that's that's what we need to be quickly in the in the profession. And you know, we have a lot to celebrate, but you're absolutely right. We our jobs are very fulfilling and um you know it's uh it's it's uh it's humbling at the end of the day where you know people can't go without services or feel great after we get danced, but um uh it's uh uh you know we have a lot of good feedback from people and uh I think what we need to do is we need to really harness that as far as the energy and that uh that the those data points go, right? So the feedback surveys anything that we can get to to help um help our kids and to educate others out there, but we bring that to you know, we can bring that to knowledge out there, but um um like uh for for high school kids because we're even more involved in this than we have the database of stuff we focus on. So I don't I'm not over you know, just just talking out loud, but I think it's it's something that we really need to focus on, especially um high schoolers and then those that are In undergraduate courses, um, you know, I teach also as in exercise science, and the majority of the students that I teach want to be athletic trainers, so guiding them in that direction is extremely important, has been important um for me uh as a well as an instructor. So getting that going.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

You you made a good point with the career fairs. I I have attended more career fairs at high schools and colleges in the last 12 months than I had at any point because I want more kids to see the value and the benefit and experience you know that we what we fully have in the world of active training. You know, we've done such a great job over the last 20 years of helping people identify ways active trainers can be beneficial to them in their life. If you look at all the settings and the growth of all the emerging settings, it's been great. But at our core, and that's in both, we still have to create folks that want to do the original intent of our of our profession, right? And so the only way we can we can have enough is if we can just keep creating more. That's a great um opportunity for us for sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Taylor, do you have anything else to add before we wrap up here?

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Oops sorry. So uh I just wanted to say thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Yes. Yeah, and you know, we've only scratched the surface here, but we'll definitely have you on in the future after we get through at least like a season of of uh of guests. I'd like to have you back on and you can go a little bit more in depth with uh the work that you're doing, and maybe you'll have uh you know, maybe you'll have some more data to present to us then.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Sure. I'd I'd love it. Thanks so much for the invite, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah. Thanks uh thanks for being on, and uh that will do it for this this episode. And uh we'll be back again within the next few weeks with another one. Take care.