Certified athletic trainers are highly qualified, multi-skilled health care professionals that work in collaboration with physicians. The practice of athletic training encompasses preventing, examining, diagnosing, treating, and rehabilitating emergent, acute or chronic injuries and medical conditions in the physically active population.
Athletic trainers work with a range of patients and can assume a variety of positions in traditional and emerging clinical settings. Employment settings include high schools, colleges, universities, professional sports teams, hospitals, rehabilitation clinics, physicians’ offices, corporate and industrial institutions, the military, and the performing arts. Regardless of the setting, athletic trainers’ clinical practice is regulated by their state practice act.