Over the last few months, there have been a staggering amount of publications that argue very strongly for the need to place Certified Athletic Trainers at every high school. The argument has even been made that if you can't afford an athletic trainer, then you can't afford sports like football, wrestling, hockey, and lacrosse. I have never thought about this problem too much since the majority of the schools that I have consistent contact with have an athletic trainer on site. However, after having started out as a part time ATC for a local school, I do appreciate how difficult that can be. I have only recently begun to think more about why it is so important for the schools to have full time athletic trainers as most of the current articles call for. I have to admit, they are right. With the attention being focused so heavily on TBIs and heat illnesses today, there is no good excuse for a school system to not have a full time ATC for their program. It is simply a demonstration of fiscal responsibility to make sure that your school has a full time athletic trainer. The athletic trainer does so much in prevention and treatment that they usually end up paying for themselves.
Addendum 8/28/10: Scripps News has a series of articles that discusses this problem in depth.
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