Inclusion of AT in IPE programs could facilitate the profession’s desire to be seen as true health professionals. On the one hand, it can help AT students to socialize as healthcare professionals, making them more prepared for Interprofessional practice. IPE also benefits professional programs by aligning them better with other health profession programs. This educational collaboration and alignment allows content and professional behaviors to become common place in all health professions. Education is not enough however, as many may not appreciate the experience until they are practicing on their own. We as a profession must work to better model consistent Interprofessional practice, so that athletic training students can understand and see its benefit first hand during their clinical rotations.
I've created a list of 5 easy ways we as athletic trainers can do more to practice interprofessionally.
1. Introduce Yourself
This may seem like a given, but it's too easy to just meet your guiding physician once at the start of a new job and not follow up and attempt to get to know each other better. Take the extra effort to make yourself known! The more comfortable you become with one another, the easier the
communication and the IPP will become second nature. If you're one of many Athletic trainers a physician is working with and you don't make any extra effort to build that relationship, then the physician may naturally be more weary of your skills and knowledge than someone they are more accustomed to working with.
2. Send your Patients Prepared
Sending your patient prepared is especially important if you work as an outreach athletic trainer, or at a secondary school setting. (really any setting that doesn't provide direct access to your team physician.) What constitutes prepared depends on how your practice is run but some examples could be: Having insurance paperwork filled out, having notice of injury forms filled out, sending initial evaluation notes and/or follow up notes with the patient. All of these things help to clarify the history of the injury and treatment process for the physician or medical professional the patient is seeing. By doing this it also encourages a detailed follow up on how the visit went from the other health care professionals side.
3. FOLLOW UP
This seems implied, but all too often athletic trainers rely on the patient to accurately summarize their visit for us. Following up with the physician directly can promote inter-collaboration as well as encourage consistency in patient care. If you don’t feel comfortable calling them, perhaps because you haven't developed a strong professional relationship yet, there are still ways in which you can follow up. Have the patient ask for a visit summary note for their athletic trainer, this lets you see the physicians diagnosis and immediate care plan. You could also send the patient with your card and have them ask the physician or physician extender to call you with an update on the visit. While we may be able to get a fairly accurate idea of how the visit went from the patient, this could also make things more confusing. Without a note or verbal discussion, there's no way for you to confirm if the doctor "cleared" someone or "restricted" them. I had one instance where a patient was sent for shoulder pain and came back saying she "pulled her clavicle and was allowed to play as long as it didn’t hurt." Naturally physician clarity was needed in that case.
4. Let them know what you can handle in house
Creating the understanding between your physician and yourself on the scope of your practice can help to prevents unnecessary referrals, time and money on the hospital and patient's end. Y successfully handling the skills you tell them you can handle, it increases trust and strengthens the team's functioning.
For Example: we have suture kits and a doctor at our site, so we are able to suture kids and remove kids sutures. This helps so that kids aren't out of play too long or missing school, practice or games to try and make a follow up appointment just to get a few sutures removed.
5. Create your own referral networks
So what do you do if your new job site doesn't have a n interdisciplinary team already in place? How can you practice interprofessionally if there are no other professionals at your disposal? Take that first step and set up a system yourself. Is there one PT clinic/Hospital/Therapy clinic that all your kids seem to go to? Call them up and have that discussion about making a policy for sending kids to them/sharing information so they can continue functional activity during practices during time loss injuries. While not all information is subject to being shared, having these conversations with local health care providers on creating a network, allows you to get your patients immediate help. Creating those connections yourself not only builds a strong network, but it shows that athletic trainers are looking at the whole body and mind for health care, considering all the possible determinants of health.
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