Jun 20, 2026Building effective partnerships between trainers, dietitians
Interdisciplinary collaboration offers athletes, teams and organizations opportunities to enhance performance and achieve desired results.
Two types of practitioners who hold important roles in interdisciplinary teams are athletic trainers and registered dietitians. In sports performance settings, their work includes assessing, evaluating and providing diagnoses and interventions for athletes. There is noticeable overlap in the educational competencies for ATs and RDs.
Both practitioners are expected to have working knowledge in exercise science and physiology, performance nutrition, hydration safety and monitoring and supplement use and safety. These similarities make ATs and RDs natural partners, enabling them to closely work together to define performance problems, determine approaches to solving said problems and reflect collectively on the effectiveness of any interventions for the athletes they care for.
Opportunities are vast for alignment of care that highlight collaboration between ATs and RDs, but might include evaluation of supplements, management of eating disorders and optimizing hydration practices among athletes.
Collaboration in context
Both ATs and RDs are primary sources of information on supplements.
RDs are expected to be skillful in providing supplement education, prescribing dietary supplements to treat nutrient deficiencies and evaluating rules and regulations provided by governing bodies regarding safe and banned substances.
When it comes to provisions, RDs are also able to supply athletes directly with certain supplements with an intent to induce ergogenic effects, though this is highly reliant on where they work and what is allowed.
The rapport between an RD and AT is crucial to facilitate proper scope of practice collaboration.
Considering how frequently an athlete typically interacts with an AT, they are often viewed just as trustworthy as RDs when it comes to providing nutrition information. Even though ATs are expected to be able to educate athletes on supplement use, the rapport between an RD and AT is crucial to facilitate proper scope of practice collaboration (i.e., giving the athlete the most accurate information and resources to benefit them on the topic at hand). Thus, taking time to build these strong relationships with your fellow practitioner only further benefits the athletes you serve.
A referral is arguably one of the strongest tools an AT can possess when working with an RD. This tool is especially important for preventing, detecting and managing eating disorders.
As previously noted, the high frequency at which ATs interact with athletes puts them in a likely position to detect and intervene when an athlete presents with a suspected eating disorder. Additionally, the level of rapport they build with athletes allows for ATs to serve as a liaison between athletes and the care team. In this role, ATs assist heavily with treatment follow-through, communication, health status, changes in athletic participation status and body composition.
ATs and RDs also work closely with strength and conditioning coaches to determine and monitor safe body composition and body weight values for athletes navigating eating disorder treatment. ATs also can serve as an RD’s eyes and ears, helping monitor athletes’ eating patterns and behaviors as they are often present at team meals and during team travel.
RDs can help support the crucial role ATs play by providing them with resources and knowledge necessary to confidently identify eating disorders. While ATs may understand the importance they have in detecting eating disorders, research demonstrates that few felt confident in their ability to correctly detect an eating disorder.
Early detection is a crucial factor in eating disorder treatment success, maximizing an AT’s awareness of eating disorder warning signs can further help them identify a concern early so they can expedite the collaboration with an RD to optimize the nutrition status of the athlete needing assistance.
RDs can help support the crucial role ATs play by providing them with resources and knowledge necessary to confidently identify eating disorders.
Facilitating appropriate education and monitoring hydration often falls under the joint scope of practice for both ATs and RDs. They should be in alignment on the proper timing and administration of additives or hydration supplements based on factors that include intensity of exercise, temperature, hydration status and individual needs. This presents an opportunity for each practitioner to collaborate in assessing and monitoring fluid needs for athletes as well as determining the types of beverages and beverage additives they might provide to athletes.
Considering that fluid losses and needs are variable between athletes, methods for determining what proper hydration status looks like can be a big undertaking, especially in a large team setting.
Once individualized needs are established for athletes, ensuring needs are continually being met requires effective collaboration and coordination between ATs and RDs. In addition to actually providing athletes with their proper plan to achieve optimal hydration, both practitioners should also consider the importance of directly providing education to athletes on the tactics being enlisted so they understand the “why” behind the provisions.
Together, this collaboration when it comes to hydration is another way ATs and RDs can help prioritize athlete health and performance.
Keys to building collaborative relationships
Effective collaboration requires buy-in, adaptability, open-mindedness, humility and trust from all practitioners. However, it might take time to build all these characteristics within a team. In these situations, leaders can continue to build effectiveness and efficiency by emphasizing quality communication, role clarity, appropriate team processes and team culture.
For young RDs and ATs or experienced practitioners joining a new team, compromising with a practitioner who has been working with the team for a while may be an important first step toward the ultimate goal of collaboration.
Another valuable way RDs and ATs can foster collaboration is by investing in social capital. Continuing to emphasize trust, respect, cohesion and communication with your colleagues can set a solid foundation for truly collaborative work that happens naturally.
No matter what role a practitioner holds, it’s always important to keep in mind that athlete and team success sits above and beyond any single discipline in isolation. The rapid pace at which sports medicine and sports science has grown has led to hyperspecification. However, hyperspecification can diminish the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams by creating siloed work environments.
A continued emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration by RDs and ATs under effective leadership can help practitioners more effectively manage any problems that might arise, thereby keeping athlete health, performance and success at the forefront of all who are invested.
