Emotional Intelligence (EI) is defined as a social intelligence; involving cognition to monitor’s one’s own emotions, as well as others, to discriminate among them using the information received to guide one’s thinking and action or the “ability to understand and manage people.” (1) It's the ability to fully express and evaluate the emotions of yourself and others, and to control that expressed emotion and the ability to exploit that emotion for a desired outcome. Having the non-cognitive capabilities and skills necessary to have high EI, is influential in one's success in coping with environmental demand and pressures. These skills include emotional understanding, increased self-awareness and self-regulation, adaptive coping, and adaptive adjustment to changing environments. While EI Is not a reliable predictor of clinical performance, those with higher EI will be more aware of their own and those around them's current state, allowing them to approach situations in a more prepared manner, and identifying when they may be in need of some physical or mental help. An individual can become aware of their personal needs and address them through self-care.
Self-care is the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health, wellbeing and happiness, in particular during periods of stress. This takes on different forms for different people as we all value and find fulfillment from different things. Self-care is an important practice, especially in a setting like athletic training where burnout is so prevalent. However, symptoms of burnout, may make even self-care difficult. When an individual becomes burnt out they may experience a lack of interest in doing things, loss of motivation, depression and mood or behavior changes. These symptoms weigh heavily on the individual and may limit the individuals ability to find balance again.
I think self-care and emotional intelligence will only get us so far. Its putting a band aid on a bullet hole and until the culture of athletic training changes, there will continue to be high burnout and attrition rates. So while it is important that athletic trainers have emotional intelligence and practice personal self-care methods, in whatever way works for them, employers need to focus on what they can do to make a work environment where emotional intelligence and self care are not the sole methods of preventing burnout.
The Head Athletic Trainer plays a big role in creating this healthy work environment, as supervisor support has been recognized as critical for Ats to find WLB. (2) The Head Athletic Trainer is who the rest of the staff looks to as an example. Therefore they should model and practice effective work-life balance to encourage the same behaviors in their fellow employees. (2) Supervisors who demonstrate a commitment to their own work-life balance encourage the collective pursuit of balance among the staff, which improves the workplace atmosphere and promotes an environment that is viewed as family friendly. (1)(2) They set the tone for how the workplace Is run and therefore the expectations and limit that staff can expect. In order to truly encourage work life balance and a healthy work environment, the head athletic trainer should lead the fight for AT recognition and support for all of their staff, through implementation of the strategies discussed below.(2) If the head athletic trainer is not supportive of setting boundaries, modified job sharing, and fighting for increased staffing and pay, then the assistant and associate athletic trainers may not feel encouraged to fight for these things in their own life. Similar to how athletic trainers utilize position statements to ensure best practice in their workplace for injury prevention and treatment, they should utilize the NATA's position statement for creating a healthy work environment to fight burn out among their peers.
The following are some strategies the NATA suggest in their position statement to prevent burnout and maintain WLB:
1. Modified job sharing
Modified job sharing is when athletic trainers utilize their fellow athletic trainers to assist with their job duties. Athletic trainers are notorious for trying to do everything themselves, and often we get into the mindset that if I work as the main athletic trainer for a specific team, I have to be the one to provide all the care and coverage for them. In reality, every athletic trainer on an institutions staff is capable of providing adequate health care to athletes of all sports. Instead of missing life events and being afraid to call out sick, institutions should instead encourage their small cohorts to utilize job sharing to cover events or help with rehabs.
2. Workplace integration
Workplace integration is when the employee utilizes their down time during work hours to get personal errands accomplished, such as paying bills during lunch time, or making calls to set appointments etc. While this allows the individual to accomplish more tasks in a day, allowing them to have more personal time when they get home, it also denies them breaks, however small, to unwind and decompress throughout the work day. Additionally, in the same position statement, the NATA recommends separating work roles from personal roles. While I am sure they intended this as a "leave work at work" mindset, it perfectly represents the dissonance that many feel about trying to be productive yet maintain free time for personal activities and family time.
3. Increased Pay and Staffing
I talked about this topic in more depth already in my blog post about WLB, but feelings of being overworked and under-compensated are some of the leading factors in burnout in athletic trainers. Secondary school athletic trainers are often the sole athletic trainer for all student-athletes, and all sports, often working 2-3 sports in-season at a time, as well as working with out of season athletes to prepare them for their in season. Similarly, at the university level many athletics positions are filled through Graduate assistants or Interns, with additional support from the athletic training students. While this helps reduce the workload for the full time staff, schools that do not have GA's, Interns or Students, often times have their full time staff members work multiple sports instead. Increasing the pay to meet the demand of the job and the process of certification or increasing staffing to reduce workload, can help athletic trainers to better maintain some type of work life balance and prevent burn out.
4. Set boundaries & Communicate effectively
This is one of the areas that athletic trainers struggle with the most. We have the mindset that we need to be available for all workouts, practices and matches. Often times things come up causing sudden changes in scheduled events, and it feels like athletic trainers availability and needs are not considered when things are getting rescheduled. When the AT lacks control over activity scheduling, long hours often ensue and the AT is expected and compelled to be available. (2) The NATA recommends setting boundaries such as, not being available for calls before or after a set time unless it is an emergency, or implementing a "24-hour rule" to encourage coaching staff to inform you of schedule changes with adequate time to make adjustments to your personal schedule. While these are good practices to have, due to the long engrained "need for availability" and presence of "that's how it was in my day" athletic trainers, implementing these and sticking by your word can seem like a battle in itself, or cause a feeling of guilt for not being available.
5. Disengage from your role outside of the workplace
This is a practice that I personally value and implement. Essentially, leave work at work. Often times other athletic trainers find they can bond with each other over similar issues and struggles they have at work, or enjoy talking about new advances and technologies, or crazy injuries. While its fine to share your experiences and work to better each other as athletic trainers, boundaries should be set in your personal life as well so that individuals don't find that all they have in their life is athletic training. When all of your friends, coworkers and daily conversation revolves around your job, you begin to blur that line between personal and work life, which if you can lead someone to feel like they no longer have a personal life or true free time.
6. Develop healthy lifestyle practices
One of the most recommended self-care practices is to practice healthy lifestyle practices, such as daily exercise, eating healthfully, obtaining consistent sleep, and engaging in personal hobbies. Athletic trainers are terrible at this, though they know the benefits of these healthy lifestyle practices, and often encourage their patients to implement them in their lives. It ties back to points 1-5 above. By feeling like they must always be available, with little control over their schedules, it becomes difficult to create personal time to cook healthy meals, get daily exercise, engage in personal hobbies and get sufficient sleep. Many times, athletic trainers must chose the most important and sacrifice the others. For example, an athletic trainer may opt to get more sleep in the morning and evening, sacrificing proper meals by having a grab and go breakfast and ordering lunch all so they have more energy to work out after work. The idea here, is that by implementing the other strategies recommended above, such as setting boundaries, and utilizing modified job sharing, individuals will have a more set schedule and balanced workload allowing them to incorporate more healthy lifestyle practices.
(1) Mazerolle SM, Pitney WA, Goodman A, et al. National Athletic Trainers' Association position statement: facilitating work-life balance in athletic training practice settings. Journal of athletic training. 2018;53(8):796-811.
(2) Mazerolle SM, Goodman A, Pitney WA. Achieving work-life balance in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I setting, part I: the role of the head athletic trainer. Journal of athletic training. 2015;50(1):82-88.
(3) Hildebrand R, Volberding J, Carr WD. Examining emotional intelligence differences in athletic training undergraduates students and first-year graduate assistants. Journal of the Oklahoma Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. 2012;49(1):47-56.
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