Transistioning into New Roles

Wow.  It's been a while since I've been able to post!  I have been dealing with end of the season goodbyes with the Blue Crabs and moving on to bigger and better things.  I am now the head athletic trainer for Bowie State University and I have been excited and nervous and anxious about the whole process.  I think I have transitioned nicely, but I have only been at Bowie for 3 days (today will be 4) now, so I don't know if that transition is actually as smooth as planned.  We'll see I guess!!

Anyways...  Today I want to talk to you all about that transition.  I have had to do multiple transitions during my career as an athletic trainer.  The first one was from Student to Professional.  Talk about a scary move!  You no longer have a hand to hold, you have to do everything on your own.  Maybe if you went from student to assistant it's a bit different.  You still have someone there to bounce ideas off of and a second pair of eyes.  But maybe not.  Maybe the head isn't there all the time...  I digress... I had to transition from student to professional at a high school with no one else there.  It was a scary situation!  I remember my first major incident.  Football player got his finger stuck in a helmet at practice and was screaming that his finger was ripped off.  All I was hoping to do was not freak out when I saw an acute amputation of a finger.  Guess what?  He didn't lose his finger, he was fine.  But in that instance, I wanted someone there with me in case I was doing something wrong.  I needed reassurance.  But did I?  No...  I knew what I was doing!  The next major injury came at a football game.  Tib-fib fracture.  Happened right in front of me.  Heard the crack and everything.  Told someone else to call 9-11.  I was lucky enough to have a team doc on the sideline with me that reduced the fracture, and an EMT from the chain gang helped him put the splint on that I gave my doc.  I had nothing to do, and to be honest, for a second I was relieved.  But then I realized, this is my first tib-fib and I didn't get to be a part of it at all!  I was so upset!  Everyone else had it covered and all I did was hold the kids hand.  Not that that isn't a huge part of the whole thing, the comfort of having someone there for you, but I still wanted to DO something.  That's when I knew all my schooling had paid off.  I was ready to be part of the action!

My next transition was from high school to professional sports.  Wow...  What a jump!  I think I was more nervous for that transition than for the first one.  I knew professional baseball was going to be more demanding than high school.  The pressure to have an athlete immediately back on the field is super stressful.  There isn't pressure like that in high school.  You can say "You're injured, you're not playing" and athletes aren't happy and coaches aren't happy, but it's accepted.  If someone gets injured in professional sports, it's "I need so and so by tomorrow at 4 pm, make it happen" and that's that.  You need to be able to make a 4 week injury take a week or less to heal.  You are not a miracle worker, but it is expected of you to exhaust all possible options.  When I had a guy out with a concussion, I remembered my standard protocol.  Out until symptoms are cleared up.  Once cleared of symptoms for 24 hours, start 5 day return to play protocol.  If symptoms come back, start over.  That's not how it was with my stint as the athletic trainer for the Blue Crabs.  Someone gets a concussion, they start return to play almost immediately.  The player I just referred to went to the doctor that day.  By the time he went to the doc, he was symptom free.  Was cleared to start the RTP the next day.  WHAT?!  That's nothing I've ever heard of!  He went through the protocol with flying colors.  The only bad part about concussion in the League that I was in, no Impact testing or other cognitive testing.  So I did not have a baseline.  But still....  that's an example of an injury that should have taken longer that didn't.  Also, you are more than just an athletic trainer in all situations, but this was very apparent here.  I dealt with hotel set ups and making sure everyone was where they needed to be at the correct time.  Doctor's appointments, physicals, bus schedule, meal money, worker's comp...  I dealt with it all.  Season 1 was definitely a learning season.  Season 2, I had it down.  But how different the experience was to go from high school to pros than from out of school to high school.

Now I come to my third transition...  Professional to College.  You would think that it would be easier because professional sports...  Need I say more?  However, I am now the head athletic trainer.  I have never had someone under me until now.  Having someone there and being their boss is kind of intimidating.  Am I making the correct decision?  Will I be a good role model?  Am I someone to look up to?  These are all questions I am asking myself every day.  Besides that, college athletes are way different than high school or professional.  Their attitudes about injuries are different.  In high school it's more of "Oh I'm hurt because I don't want to practice", in professional it's "I'm injured but I need to play in 3 hours, figure it out", but in college its a good mix of both.  Not that they want to get out of practice or they're rushing too fast to get in, but they understand they are injured and want to do everything they can to get better.  You have some of the extremists to either side, but most of them UNDERSTAND.  I'm not really used to that.  High school they didn't care if they played or not, professionals wanted you to work miracles on broken bones...  College athletes?  They're a rare breed.  And I'm enjoying what I'm seeing.  I think that this is going to be a great transition, but I'm still nervous.  What if they don't like the way I do things?  What if I don't know something and my assistant judges that and thinks they should have hired someone else?  I don't know...

It's tough to transition into something new.  But you have to know that each transition is going to make you a better person.  They wouldn't have hired you if they didn't think you had what it takes.

Anyone have any fun/scary/inspiring transition stories for us to learn from?

Happy Football Season!!

Football season is upon us and I could not be happier!  Football is my favorite season out of the year.  The games, the atmosphere, the excitement.  It's just the best season!  However, with football comes injuries.  And I definitely don't want to hammer home concussions any more, but it's unfortunately something that everyone has to deal with.

I am going to share a story with you that I heard when I was in grad school doing a clinical rotation at a high school.  It goes like this:  Years ago, there was a football player.  He was the stud of the team.  I believe he was the quarterback.  One game during his senior year, he got sacked.  He popped right back up, argued with the ref about a bad call, and then dropped to the ground in a Grand Mal seizure.  He was air lifted to the hospital where he had emergency brain surgery.  Subdural and subarachnoid bleed.  He should have died.  Luckily, his athletic trainer knew how to handle the situation.  It helped she was a paramedic as well.  She immediately radioed for the helicopter and stabilized the athlete as best she could.  He was diagnosed with those bleeds due to Second Impact Syndrome.  Apparently, he had gotten hit in the head in a practice or game (I can't remember which) and never told anyone that he was feeling bad after the initial hit.  Denied any symptoms and there were no signs showing a head injury.  Well, the fast action of his AT saved his life.  If she wasn't there, he would have died.

The moral of this story is that we need to be more aware of kids trying to stay in the game after a head injury.  I am not saying that this AT had any knowledge of the first hit.  She didn't.  I'm saying when we have control.... It makes me cringe watching some hits in college football, where an athlete is unconscious on the field, and then goes back into the game.  How is this teaching our youth that head injuries are serious?  I can't fathom that any of the players I have seen "knocked out" (i.e. the Michigan player last year) being OK to return to play after such an injury.  If a player is unconscious on the field, he/she needs to exit the game and not return until further evaluation and rest.

Am I the only one that feels this way?