The Certified Athletic Trainer is a unique healthcare provider who manages several roles and responsibilities in the broad spectrum of Sports Medicine. Certified Athletic trainers are not Personal Trainers and are distinguished by their education and training. They are trained to handle multiple tasks and work with Physicians to make objective and evidence based decisions for exercise progression and return to play.

Certified Athletic Trainers are unique health care providers, highly skilled and educated providers to the athletic and physically active population. Athletic training is practiced by athletic trainers, healthcare providers who collaborate with physicians to optimize activity and participation of patients and clients. Athletic training encompasses the prevention, diagnosis, and intervention of emergency, acute, and chronic medical conditions involving impairment, functional limitations, and disabilities.

More than 70 percent of certified athletic trainers hold at least a master’s degree. Athletic Trainers can be found in a variety of emerging work settings including secondary schools, colleges, and universities, professional sports, sports medicine clinics, hospitals, physician offices, the military, occupational workplaces, performing arts, youth sports, recreation and more.

The National Athletic Trainers Association (www.nata.org) represents the more than 30,000 members of the athletic training profession through research and education (www.natafoundation.org). Athletic Trainers are certified through the Board of Certification Inc. (www.bocatc.org) and licensed by the state of Florida. Members of the NATA must agree to abide by the Association’s Code of Ethics. The Board of Certification Inc. requires that all credential holders abide by the Standards of Practice.

Sports medicine is an “umbrella term” used to define specialties in preventing, diagnosing, and treating injuries related to participation in sports, physical activity and/or exercise. Sports medicine is difficult to define because it is not a single specialty, but an area that involves a wide variety of health care professionals, researchers, and educators from various disciplines.

The sports medicine “team” can include specialty physicians, surgeons, strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, team coaches, certified athletic trainers as well as the athlete. Despite this wide scope, there is a tendency to assume all sport-related issues are musculoskeletal in nature and thus an orthopaedic specialty.

There is much more to sports medicine than just musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment. Illness or injury in sport can be caused by many factors – from environmental to physiological to psychological. Consequently, sports medicine can encompass an array of specialties, including primary care, cardiology, pulmonology, rehabilitation medicine, orthopaedic surgery, nutrition, dentistry, opthalmology, exercise physiology, and biomechanics. We have access to some of the finest Physicians in the area of Sports Medicine.