Athletic Training Chat

In this episode, we talk with Jessica McManus who is an athletic trainer that has been employed to work with patients in the Stewart County Georgia School System. We originally discussed the innovATe program with Dr. Christy Eason in Ep. ## and that is how we connected with Jessica. Jessica is serving this school district but in a unique way. She is doing it as a part-time athletic trainer in addition to her full-time work as an industrial athletic trainer.

Aaron Jackson talks with host Mercedes Himmons on the importance of mental health in our patients and the ATs role. This topic can’t be talked about enough and Aaron brings a lot of great insight and talks about the research he has been doing and how he applies best practices to working with his patients. Aaron provides so much insight into mental health and the ATs role.

Eli Kassab is an athletic trainer that currently works in the sport setting but has done a little bit of everything, including spending some significant time in high-level football. Through all of this, Eli found himself getting burned out from the constant go of the profession. This led Eli to find some new opportunities to break the cycle of burnout and see what else might be next in his career.

Athletic training is a unique health care profession that in many of the “traditional” settings allows for patient interaction at minimum on a daily basis. This provides a unique opportunity for athletic trainers to be more to their athletes than just prevention, evaluation, treatment and rehab. Bonds of trust can get built as we often learn more about person lives than other health care providers are able to.

Dr. Alejandra Merriman is an athletic trainer and teacher in the secondary setting in Los Angeles California. In addition to those full-time jobs, she is also one of founders of LatinxATs.

Mercedes Himmons is an athletic training and was one of our guests on the “Race in Athletic Training” episode. Mercedes provides unique and fantastic insight into race in the profession and her own interactions with it. We discuss inclusivity in the profession and how it is so important in the profession. Asking questions, listening and trying to comprehend what others go through is so important. 

Ken Cieslak is a DC, AT but doesn’t necessarily use the skills in that order. In this episode, we discuss how it came to be that Ken pursued a chiropractic degree while keeping his AT credential and then ultimately staying predominately in the AT profession in the SSAT. It definitely surprised us.

When we kicked off ATChat there wasn’t much for Athletic Trainer podcasts and then there were several, another one right in Wisconsin. So we had to get together. In this episode we sit down with Chad and Kevan of the Candid Athletic Trainer podcast. We met up at Mueller Sports Medicine in the M Center to talk athletic training, how both of the podcasts got started and then we just let it go from there.

Jen Xu is a minimalist shoe enthusiast in addition to everything else she has going on. Jen is currently a PhD student at the University of Virginia, doing stand up comedy, taking care of a new puppy and writing on Medium. This discussion came up when Jen posted about the importance of the details and nuance that come with moving into minimalist shoes. This idea grew into the conversation we had about the importance of nuance in everything athletic training.

Lori Uretsky has done a lot in her career and picked up so many invaluable skills along the way. Currently Lori works in the military setting and she couldn’t be happier doing it. In this episode that is what we talk about. Lori outlines the demands that are placed on the military members she works with and how it influences her care approach to each individual. She highlights how important it is to focus on the individual and what they need from you and she accomplishes this by focusing on specific questions.