What puzzles me is how this is even a debate. We are health care professionals and according to our professional organization’s code of ethics we can not discriminate against any patients. While, I sympathize with some of the arguments that these rules are to avoid the so-called “tv tape-jobs” and athletes who only getting taped on game-days, how the rules are worded hurts the respect our professional organizations have fought for years for us to obtain.
It is one thing to deny tapings based on someone not having a previous injury, only wanting it to look cool, or for someone who has not done rehab, but it is unacceptable to base a patient’s treatments on his/her athletic ability or importance. If your first and fourth string QB ask to get taped and neither has an injury or did rehab, they both better be treated the same (regardless of whether your decision is tape or not tape them).
One of my favorite hashtags on twitter is #at4all because as a profession it is something we take great pride in (being able to translate our skills to multiple different populations), but I challenge every athletic trainer to think of the meaning when they use it.
My final thought is that if we are going to complain about lack of respect from other health care providers, we need to start acting like the other health care providers, an emergency room physician would not treat based on who gets the most carries in a football game, so neither should we.
#togetherwemustdobetter #at4all #at4at
Joe Vogler LAT, ATC