Jan 29, 2015Peer-to-Peer Questions
There were several peer-to-peer discussions at this year’s Annual Meeting, and they seemed to provide some really interesting back-and-forth between the attending athletic trainers. One of them, titled Competency Assurance: The Changing Face of Recertification, prompted discussion about continuing education, how education hours are reported, and the possibility of introducing a recertification test.
Many of the attendees posed questions to their peer athletic trainers during the session. Here is a recap of most of them. A lot of good discussion stemmed from these, so maybe they’ll get you thinking about the topic, too.
“We get good education when we attend workshops and seminars, but it doesn’t necessarily make us better athletic trainers … I may have learned how to do something new, but I didn’t get to try it in a hands-on setting, so I probably won’t actually institute this new thing in my practice. So really, how valuable was the education?”
“Should we be tracking CEU hours electronically?”
“What about informal education? We’ve all had conversations with our peers about maybe how to do something differently, and I think some of the most valuable education we get is from each other.”
“What is competence? Does the definition change from when we’re talking about a graduate student to a longtime athletic trainer or is it the same?”
“Do you come to the NATA Meeting to go to sessions that you already know a lot about, or do you come to go to sessions that are about new and different topics you aren’t quite as knowledgeable in?”
“Should it be required that we go to sessions in each category or area of athletic training?”
“The athletic training profession is becoming more specialized. Do we all really still need to be experts in every area of athletic training? … Is it better to be competent in every area or an expert in one or two areas?”
“There is no measure of our competence after we take the BOC exam. Should there be a re-test every few years?”