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 health care providers 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 health care. Design Qualitative study. Setting Individual interviews. Patients or Other Participants Nine behavioral health care providers (women = 6, men = 3; age range = 30–59 years, years in clinical practice = 6–25) from National Collegiate Athletic Association Power 5 schools were interviewed. Data Collection and Analysis Participants were contacted via publicly available information on their university websites. Participants engaged in individual, audio-only interviews 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 multianalyst triangulation was performed to analyze the transcripts for common themes and subthemes. Results Three themes emerged (1) provider experience, (2) the AT’s role in behavioral health, and (3) collaboration. Provider experience included subthemes of formal education and interaction with ATs. Subthemes of the AT’s role included care coordination, information gathering, and positive proximity. Subthemes for collaboration included structural collaboration, cultural collaboration, collaboration concerns, and suggestions for ideal collaboration. Conclusions Collaborative care models can enhance providers’ abilities and maximize support of student-athlete wellness. In this study, we demonstrated that behavioral health providers working within a collaborative care model with ATs had overall positive experiences with such collaboration and that clear role delineation and responsibilities helped to foster high-quality patient care.