What is next for the NATA, athletic training, and sports medicine?

Something I’ve been thinking about is “where are we going?” By we, I’m referring to athletic trainers, the National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA), BOC, etc.

Full disclosure, I am not an NATA representative, BOC representative, or am speaking in any official capacity or on behalf of any organization or group.

Where are we going? Where is athletic training going? (Where are all the athletic trainers going?)

The NATA is reporting that “Athletic training is among the fastest growing professions in health care. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 17%* job growth over the next 10 years, much faster than average growth projections.” My first question about this statistic is: Is this fool’s gold? I ask this question because I am skeptical about this. Athletic training is a high turnover field; you have to make changes early in your career to get ahead, do intern or graduate assistantship types of jobs, and salary hop. I can think of several jobs that I see posted annually that seem to be a turnover role. The reason I ask if this 17% growth projection is fool’s gold is based on this fact: we change jobs a lot in this field. Furthermore, athletic training attrition is pretty high. Do these projections show a field that’s growing or does it look resemble growth due to high turnover?

I was curious about how the bureau came up with these statistics, so I read about their methods. As I understand it, probably very poorly, they aggregate data across many domains: census data, wage growth projections, GDP and commodities projections, and many more data points. Data are then analyzed with multiple advanced calculations and then projections are made. One thing that I found interesting is there is a calculation that attempts to adjust for expected turn over within a given field. This partly answered one of my questions, they do attempt to adjust for turnover. The real question is: are they able to analyze the difference between people leaving jobs to take a new job in the field or are they only looking at data where people leave the field for a new job in a new job category?

I ask a lot of stupid questions about data.

Sure, this all sounds great: our field is growing…or is it? I’m sure that there is growth happening. More and more schools who don’t have athletic trainers are gaining access, colleges are more appropriately staffing the sports medicine department, and there are emerging settings for the athletic trainer. The NATA does a great job advocating for the athletic trainer’s versatility across multiple healthcare job roles. I’m still cynical about the amount of growth we have. Why? Attrition rate. I’m convinced the attrition rate of this field contributes to this. Think of it like this: the bucket may be filing up quickly, but what if the bucket has a big leak in it?

I’m not sure if this data is readily available, but what is the attrition rate in our field? Obviously, I don’t expect the NATA to have this easily accessible. People may get jobs outside of the athletic training field but maintain their credential ‘just in case.’ Nevertheless, I still am curious about where the change happens.

I read through the 2021 NATA salary survey white paper report. 7365 participants in the study selected their age. According to the report  “The majority of respondents (57 percent) were young professionals under the age of 36. Twenty-three percent were between the ages of 36 and 45, 15 percent were between 46 and 55, and only 6 percent were older than 55.”

Now, this obviously isn’t representative of the entire population of athletic trainers, but if it were, the results are alarming.

Essentially, 60% of athletic trainers are under 36, up to 80% are under 45, and 94% are no older than 55. Our workforce undergoes a tremendous shift around age 30 and is virtually non-existent by age 55.

One interesting note: the median salary listed by the bureau for athletic trainers is $48,420. (https://data.bls.gov/projections/occupationProj)

According to the NATA 2021 Salary Survey the average national salary is $61,998. Now, I understand the difference between an average number and the median of a data set, that’s not the point. The point is: those are very different numbers.

Is our field growing? Is it good that it’s growing so fast? If our field is growing, why do people leave? How many people leave the field and when do they do it?

The NATA has a strategic plan to help grow the profession. I’ve read it and think that it’s reasonable. Obviously they aren’t going to publish statistics about attrition rates, job dissatisfaction, profession-wide burnout, and any of the other issues plaguing the field; it’s bad publicity. I don’t try to be contrarian, conspiratorial, or bring disreputation to the NATA by raising these questions. I’m a proud NATA member and hope the profession can grow into a more sustainable career in healthcare. I just think that these are some of the biggest issues in our field and it troubles me that it isn’t discussed more candidly.