This time of year is always exciting for me. Not only because the
holidays typically bring some amount of time for rest and recovery, although
this is certainly a nice perk, but because as the year came to a close there
was a time of reflection and looking forward to the future. Now that the
new year has arrived, so have the new year resolutions! The ever famous, I’m
going to get into shape this year, lose some weight, by the way I’ve never done
well with that one. The other day however, I had a thought, this year I
will make resolutions that will help me professionally and personally.
As I began to think about this more, I came up with many different ways
that I can put this plan to work for me. Ultimately I want to make
resolutions that will help me to improve as a professional and hopefully
advance the profession as a whole. Communication is an area that I feel I
am pretty good at, but at the same time, this is an area that I feel can always
be better. Communication is important in so many different ways. It
is important to communicate with co-workers, patients, parents, coaches, other
ATs, regardless of your work setting the list can go on and on. I
personally want to improve communication with my co-worker in the athletic
training room. I feel that this can be a huge step toward improving
communication across the spectrum. We already communicate well, but how
can we improve on that? For others, maybe it is communication with coaches that
could improve, or maybe it is communication with parents. Regardless, something
that I think could be extremely helpful is communicating with seasoned athletic
trainers, previous mentors or those who work around you. There is a great
deal to be learned from the past. Often times we get so caught up in the
way things are that we lose sight of where we came from. Not that change
is bad or that new ways of doing things don’t work, but maybe some advice from
a colleague who has experienced what you are dealing with could be helpful.
Another area that I thought of is promoting ATs and the profession as a
whole. We all benefit from these efforts, whether it is on the local,
state, district or national level. Something as simple as providing a
talk over health and safety to a local little league program, hosting a session
on workplace safety, or going to Washington DC for Capitol Hill Day these
efforts advance the profession and the professional. As I was going over
this it came to mind that this year I have to renew my application to be
recognized as a Safe Sports School. For those of you who received this
recognition the first year, don’t forget to renew in 2016. This is
something that everyone in the secondary school setting can do and the best
part is, it promotes you and what you do to ensure the safety of your student-athletes,
it promotes your school and the support they provide to you, and it promotes
the profession and ATs as leaders in the field of athletic health care.
To find out more about how your campus can become a Safe Sports School,
click here.
What better way to give back to the profession of athletic training in
this new year than to resolve to make yourself and the profession as a whole
better? Regardless of your work setting, resolve to become the best you can be.
It all starts with you, you are the face of athletic training in your
community, make us proud.
Do have some resolutions that you think could impact the profession as
whole or you as a professional? Leave them in the comments below.
Josh Woodall; M.Ed., ATC, LAT
SWATA President
