Dr. Alvarez and group:

This paragraph from your recent email is rather disturbing to me and I was
left with one important question in my mind - what exactly IS your job as an AT
educator if it is not to prepare students that are employable???? You seem
to contradict your first statement by stating later that "our job is to
prepare athletic trainers, plain and simple." Which is it?

As a long time practicing clinician in athletic trainer, a long-time
educator (albeit in the secondary school setting), and a long-time BOC examiner
I have grown increasingly concerned with the quality of students I am seeing who
are being allowed to take the BOC exam.

In a recent discussion with a program director her in SC I lamented the fact
that it seems like we are producing more and more prospective ATs who are
being taught to the test and have limited ability to think on their feet and
make appropriate decisions when they don't have cut and tried information about
the situation.

I hear a lot of explanations (excuses??) about why this is. The BOC argues
that its job is to provide an exam that measures a student's minimum
competencies and that it is the responsibility of the ATEPs to insure students
are well qualified. ATEP directors and instructors argue (as you have done in
your post) that it's not their job to produce employable ATCs, but rather just
to educate them. The profession argues that we should be accepted and employed
solely as athletic trainers in ANY professional setting we choose to become
involved in and then we wonder why other established or emerging allied
health care professions become annoyed with us.

To that degree, I agree wholeheartedly with your closing comment, "I
continue to be concerned at the voices calling for further adjustments to our
curriculum to reflect the number of graduates who find positions in the clinical
setting. Let's make sure we know why they are getting those positions before we
change our profession to something none of us recognize nor care about."

As I have very publicly noted in previous published writings, our profession
is becoming far to convoluted. A profession cannot establish a foothold
unless it stands still long enough for the public to recognize exactly what our
profession is.

To this end, and this is where I disagree most with your earlier statement,
I believe it is a PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY of AT educators to use their
positions as educators AND mentors to students to TEACH them in a way that
reflects this important concept.

Respectfully,

Jim Berry, MEd, ATC, SCAT, NREMT
Director of Sports Medicine Services
Head Athletic Trainer
Myrtle Beach High School
3302 Robert M. Grissom Parkway
Myrtle Beach, SC 29577
843-445-2051 (Office)
843-445-2026 (Fax)
email: MBTrainer@...

To repeat what others have said,
requires education;
to challenge it, requires brains.

--Mary Pettibone Poole,
A Glass Eye at a Keyhole, 1938