| Context: Athletic training is continually evolving as a health care profession. The relationship between athletic trainers (ATs) and physicians is not only a legal obligation but also a growing collaboration to improve patient care in a variety of athletic training settings. Objective: To determine if physicians understand the educational preparation, legal obligations, and scope of practice for ATs and to determine whether previous relationships and experience with ATs or athletics influences interprofessional perceptions. Design: Cross-sectional. Setting: Web-based survey. Participants: We recruited physician (MD, DO) participants (n=169) via social media (3.0%, 5/169), professional organizations (4.1%, 7/169), and personal emails (92.9%, 157/169) to ATs and physicians. Respondents were typically male Medical Doctors (male=111/169, 65.7%, female 58/169, 34.3%; MD= 133/169, 78.7%, DO=36/169, 21%). Interventions: We asked participants about their previous/current experiences working with an AT, and previous athletics experience. We used this data to categorize participants for comparison. Main Measure Outcomes: We asked participants about their degrees held, medical specialty, years practicing, primary state of practice, and gender. We then asked about the educational preparation, legal obligations, and scope of practice of an AT in their respective states (7 items). Finally, we asked participants about their interprofessional relationships with ATs using a validated interprofessional collaboration (IPC) scale. We compared the knowledge scores between those with previous, current, or no previous experience and previous experience or no experience as an athlete with separate one-way analysis of variance. Significance was set at p<0.05 a-priori. Results: Experience working with an AT significantly improved knowledge scores (F2,162=17.401, p<0.001) where those currently working with an AT scored higher (5.4 +/- 1.7) than those who previously worked with an AT (4.2 +/- 2.0, p=0.034) and those who had never worked with an AT (3.3 +/- 2.2, p<0.001). Previous experience as an athlete and exposure to an AT also significantly improved knowledge scores (F1,152=6.846, p<.010) where those who had access to an AT while participating in athletics scored higher (5.3 +/- 1.8) than those who never had access to an AT participating in athletics (4.4 +/- 2.1). Those currently working with an AT also demonstrated more positive perceptions of interprofessional collaborations, particularly regarding understanding each other's responsibilities (chi2=22.213, df=6, p=0.001), sharing similar patient care approaches (chi216.818, df=6, p=0.010), consultation (chi2=24.982, df=6, p<0.001), cooperation (chi2=36.361, df=6, p<0.001), anticipating the need for one another (chi2=33.600, df=6, p<0.001), and sharing information (chi2=30.762, df=6, p<0.001). Conclusions: Physicians who have a current working relationship with an AT and those who had access to an AT as an athlete demonstrated significantly more knowledge about an AT's academic preparation, legal obligations, and scope of practice. Moreover, physicians currently working with ATs report more positive interprofessional collaborations. Therefore, exposure to an AT increases physicians' knowledge of athletic training. |
