Exploring Summer Medical Care Within the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Setting: A Perspective From the Athletic Trainer

Context: Over the last few decades, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) has made changes related to the increase in sanctioned team activities during summer athletics. These changes may affect how athletic training services are provided. Objective: To investigate the methods by which athletic training departments of NCAA institutions manage expectations regarding athletic training services during the summer. Design: Mixed-methods qualitative and quantitative study. Setting: The NCAA Division I. Patients or Other Participants: Twenty-two athletic trainers (13 men, 9 women) participated. All were employed full time within the NCAA Division I setting. Participants were 35 +/- 8 years of age (range, 26-52 years), with 12 +/- 7 years (range, 3-29 years) of athletic training experience. Data Collection and Analysis: All participants completed a series of questions online that consisted of closed-(demographic and Likert-scale 5-point) and open-ended items that addressed the research questions. Descriptive statistics, frequency distributions, and phenomenologic analyses were completed with the data. Peer review and multiple-analyst triangulation established credibility. Results: Summer athletic training services included 3 primary mechanisms: individual medical care, shared medical care, or a combination of the 2. Participants reported working 40 +/- 10 hours during the summer. Likert-item analysis showed that participants were moderately satisfied with their summer medical care structure (3.3 +/- 1.0) and with the flexibility of summer schedules (3.0 +/- 1.2). Yet the qualitative analysis revealed that perceptions of summer medical care were more positive for shared-care participants than for individual-or combination-care participants. The perceived effect on the athletic trainer included increased workload and expectations and a negative influence on work-life balance, particularly in terms of decreased schedule flexibility and opportunities for rejuvenation. For many, the summer season mimicked the hours, workload, and expectations of the nontraditional season. Conclusions: The NCAA rule changes and medical care expectations affected the summer workload of athletic trainers, but job sharing seemed to help them manage conflict associated with providing summer athletic training services.