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EDITORIAL 

 

1 
Copyright © by Indiana State University                                                                                Clinical Practice in Athletic Training  
All rights reserved. ISSN Online 2577-8188                                                                        Volume 2 – Issue 1 – February 2019 
 

Developing the Athletic Training Clinical Scholar  
Lindsey E Eberman 
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 
 

 
Key Phrases 
Practice-based research, practice-led research, quality 
improvement   
 
Correspondence 
Dr. Lindsey Eberman, Indiana State University, 567 N. 5th 
Street, Terre Haute, IN 47809. 
E-mail: Lindsey.Eberman@indstate.edu  
Twitter: @isuathltraining 
 
Full Citation 
Eberman LE. Developing the Athletic Training Clinical 
Scholar. Clin Pract Athl Train. 2019;2(1): 1-3. 
https://doi.org/10.31622/2019/0001.1.   
 
Submitted: February 3, 2019 Accepted: February 19, 2019 
 
EDITORIAL 

The 2020 Standards for Accreditation of 
Professional Athletic Training Programs1 requires 
that athletic training programs prepare their 
graduates to integrate the core competencies into 
their clinical practice. The core competencies 
derived from the former Institute of Medicine,2 
and now National Academy of Medicine 
healthcare competencies, include patient-
centered care, interprofessional and 
collaborative practice, evidence-based practice, 
quality improvement, health care informatics, and 
professionalism. Throughout these core 
competencies graduates are expected to use 
evidence to inform practice (Standard 62), use 
systems of quality improvement (Standard 63), 
and use data to drive informed decisions 
(Standard 64).1 In the development of a patient 
care plan, graduates will need to be able to 
assess the patient’s status on an ongoing basis by 
collecting and analyzing patient-reported and 
clinician-rated outcomes (Standard 69).1 All of 
these tactics contribute to scholarly clinical 
practice by informing decisions locally, but could 
also inform the practice of others, thus having a 
global affect through dissemination as practice-
based research.   
 
As programs strategize how to teach these tactics 
to students, administrators are also likely  

 
deliberating how to support core faculty and 
planning for ongoing training of preceptors to 
demonstrate contemporary expertise. Programs 
should consider this an opportunity to meet all of 
the Standard expectations using the 
aforementioned scholarly clinical practice tactics 
and practice-based research. However, to 
effectively engage students, preceptors, and core 
faculty, program administrators must cultivate 
buy-in and expose everyone to different types of 
practice-based research. Specifically, a shift from 
faculty-led student scholarship to preceptor-
facilitated clinical scholarship will need to occur. 
But this shift can’t perpetuate conflicts between 
“the classroom” and “the athletic training facility” 
where these often assumptions between 
stakeholders in both environments that scholarly 
practices is not occurring. As these expectations 
shift, programs need to provide resources and 
help preceptors recognize that implementing 
these tactics will not only improve their clinical 
practice, but will also have the added benefits of 
enhancing clinical teaching and creating 
opportunities for collaboration with faculty to 
disseminate practice-based research. 
 
Practice-based research involves clinicians 
answering relevant healthcare questions that 
matter to them and their patients, and translating 
research findings into practice.  This can be 
achieved through a variety of scholarly activities. 
Examples of scholarship that require critical 
appraisal of the literature include evidence to 
practice reviews and validation case reports. In an 
evidence to practice review, a clinical scholar 
develops a question, hopefully about a problem 
they are trying to solve in their own practice, 
reviews the available literature, identifies a 
systematic review or meta-analysis, and helps to 
interpret and summarize this Level 1 evidence for 
others. To apply this evidence to practice, the 
clinical scholar can take the systematic review or 
meta-analysis and apply the research 
recommendations with one patient, or a series of 

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Developing the Athletic Training Clinical Scholar 

 

 
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Copyright © Indiana State University   Clinical Practice in Athletic Training 
ISSN Online 2577-8188    Volume 2- Issue 1 – February 2019 
 

patients, to determine if the best-evidence 
recommendations actually work in clinical 
practice. These are validation case reports and 
help us understand whether controlled studies with 
homogenous participant populations can translate 
in the real world. Athletic training students and 
preceptors can partner in development of 
evidence to practice reviews and validation case 
studies, especially as a scholarly activity early in 
an academic program where critical appraisal of 
the literature is the primary learning outcome.  
Quality improvement is a systematic approach to 
analyzing clinical practice and improving 
performance. One of the first mechanisms of 
quality improvement is self-reflection, such as 
accurately viewing our own practice, and is 
achievable through tasks such as chart reviews. 
Reflection should be a regular habit in clinical 
practice, and can move from self-reflection to 
seeking feedback from others such as colleagues 
or a directing physician. The act of chart reviewing 
can also serve as a mechanism to explore shared 
characteristics of patient histories, how we use 
selective tissue testing in developing a differential 
diagnosis, rates of diagnoses, or time to recovery 
after using specific interventions. Document and 
chart reviews serve as an appraisal of one’s own 
practice and help clinical scholars appreciate the 
landscape of the healthcare clinic or facility. They 
help us define what is currently happening and 
are the first step in the plan-do-study-act cycle of 
quality improvement. These are also a form of 
point-of-care research, particularly those that 
synthesize several patient cases to determine 
trends in practice. From a preceptor perspective, 
this might serve as a preliminary mechanism to 
teach athletic training students about the 
expectations of medical documentation while also 
helping to inform clinical practice decisions in the 
future.  
 
Once a clinical scholar has a good understanding 
of the current practice landscape, they can begin 
to explore what changes need to be made to 
enhance efficiency by comparing current 
processes with those detailed as best-practices in 
the evidence. Then the clinical scholar can apply 
and study the change; analyze the data, and 

determine if the change resulted in the expected 
outcome. Finally, based on the data, clinical 
scholars will adapt, adopt, or abandon the 
change. This process, the plan-do-study-act cycle, 
is a form of quality improvement and can be 
documented and disseminated. The key to any 
quality improvement project is to understand that 
it is a continuous process, not just a one-time 
activity. So engaging students in this process 
regularly and continuously will socialize them to 
the tactics and make them habitual in clinical 
practice.   
 
To effectively assess a patient’s progress, athletic 
trainers need to be collecting and analyzing 
patient-reported and clinician-rated outcomes. 
Clinical outcomes research is a mechanism for 
communicating how measurement tools have been 
used in practice. Because these papers can be 
written from a variety of perspectives, clinical 
scholars could evaluate a specific outcome 
measure, or compare multiple measures in several 
patients from the same population or 
experiencing the same injury or illness. The 
application of outcome measures with one single 
patient is a great first step toward clinical 
integration. This data gathering technique can 
help with individual patient progress and ensure 
patient safety. As clinical scholars evolve, they 
should consider applying outcome measures to 
larger populations to determine clinician 
effectiveness, specifically regarding the 
interventions we apply. Clinical practice 
effectiveness of physical medicine and 
rehabilitation procedures is largely unknown, 
especially regarding interventions applied to 
patients that are not college-aged, white, or male. 
Unfortunately, most best-practice 
recommendations have been developed from high 
quality evidence, but in very homogeneous and 
often uninjured populations, which limits some of 
the recommendations. Clinical outcomes research 
can help develop evidence to support our 
decision-making, and because it is a tactic that we 
should be doing with each and every patient in 
their personalized care plans, it should be part of 
daily duties. As athletic training students move 
from interdependence to independent clinical 



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Copyright © Indiana State University   Clinical Practice in Athletic Training 
ISSN Online 2577-8188    Volume 2- Issue 1 – February 2019 
 

care, one mechanism for practice performance 
evaluation in clinical education is a clinical 
outcomes research report, where the student 
demonstrates clinical competence through patient 
outcomes to preceptors and program personnel.   
 
Clinicians hoping to integrate evidence into their 
practice are looking for clinically relevant 
research, which is evidence that comes from within 
practice and informs decisions at a global level. 
The traditional thesis is no longer relevant to meet 
these needs, especially for developing a clinical 
scholar. Professional masters programs should 
strongly consider these practice-based research 
initiatives as they meet multiple Standards1 and 
outcomes of the program. These activities should 
transcend the program through sequentially 
planned experiences over the course of the 
curriculum. A constructivist approach that has 
students making meaning from experience to 
experience, reinforces the previous learning and 
minimizes the stigma of research in clinical 
practice. This is how we change the culture of 
athletic training and embrace evidence in clinical 
practice! 
 
REFERENCES 
 
1. Commission on Accreditation of Athletic 

Training Education.  2020 Standards for 
Accreditation of Professional Athletic 
Training Programs. Available at: 
https://caate.net/wp-
content/uploads/2018/09/2020-
Standards-for-Professional-Programs-
copyedited-clean.pdf. Accessed on January 
26, 2019.  

2. Institute of Medicine. Crossing the quality 
chasm: A new health care system for the 21st 
century, Washington, DC; 2001.  

 

 

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