Meeting Personal Health Care Needs in Primary Care: A Response From the Athletic Training Profession

Abstract

Context Review of the origins, history, and attributes of primary care demonstrates continued challenges for the future of primary care and care delivery. The profession of athletic training may benefit from a critical self-review to examine its readiness to assist in reinventing primary care. Objective To explore parity between primary care attributes and athletic training practice and promote a timely and relevant discussion of primary care and public health integration native to athletic training practice, competency-based education with an emphasis on milestones, and the development of clinical specialists to prepare a well-trained workforce. Background General practitioners developed educational reforms through graduate medical education that resulted in primary care as it is known today. Graduate medical education has refined its assessment of students to include milestones for the purpose of describing the progression of clinical competence with identifiable behaviors. The development of future clinical specialists in primary care will also involve competence in public health. Recommendation(s) Practicing clinicians and educators should begin to critically explore the congruencies between the primary care attributes and athletic training practice. It is important to conceptualize traditional models of care within the frameworks of primary care and public health, given that athletic training practice routinely engages patients at personal, community, and environmental levels. The athletic training skill mix should be purposefully presented within interprofessional health care teams in primary care so that stakeholders can appropriately integrate athletic trainers (ATs) at the point of first contact. It is plausible that continued structural changes in the traditional practice settings will be required to facilitate integration of ATs into primary care. Conclusion(s) The impact of ATs in ambulatory settings and primary care possesses a foundation in the current literature. The ATs are uniquely suited to create a symbiotic pattern of care integrating both primary care and public health for improved outcomes.