April/May 2000

Editor's Message

By Kristen M. Pratt

You Get What You Pay For

On the way to the International Seating Symposium in February, I met a professional referee for the National Basketball Association (NBA). We were chatting about his job—the intensive 9 months of traveling, which takes him away from his wife; the joy of having a career that he loves; and the large financial rewards that come with working in professional sports. He then began chatting about his sister, a certified athletic trainer (ATC), who works in a high school in Alabama. She shares his passion for sports, which led her to a career as an ATC. She also enjoys the same benefit of working at a job that she loves. However, he somewhat bitterly added that she worked extremely hard—late nights on game days that involved being on the road anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours; high stress levels; and providing not only medical care to athletes but also emotional support. This ATC performs all of these duties for less than $30,000 per year. Her brother makes six figures.

Salaries for ATCs are surprisingly low. The National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) conducted a salary survey for 1998 and the first quarter of 1999 of their membership (92% of ATCs worldwide belong to NATA) with 1,500 members responding. The results provide some valuable insight. Texas and Arkansas offer the highest average salary for ATCs with only 9.3% making less than $20,000 and the estimated average salary at $38,193. The lowest paying region includes Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming with 35.2% of ATCs earning less than $20,000 and the estimated average at $28,733.

Not surprisingly, the highest paying setting is professional sports with the estimated average salary at $46,345; the corporate and industrial (ie, manufacturing plants, prison systems) settings are not far behind at $45,795 and $45,000, respectively. What about the high school setting? What about the ATCs who work with your children who play sports with alarming head injury statistics such as football? Catch the article on concussion management in athletes (page 20) by Tory R. Lindley, MA, ATC, to see how ATCs protect athletes from mild traumatic brain injuries and their reoccurrence and how skilled a trainer needs to be to make the correct decision on benching players or sending them back out onto the field.

Kent Falb, ATC, PT, president of NATA, comments, “When assessing the ATC’s salary, you must take into account the excessive number of hours, the number of sports, the number of athletes, the now extended off-season skills and weight-training programs, and the expectations placed on the ATC by administrators, coaches, parents, and the athletes themselves. When you couple that with the diverse responsibilities the ATC has in providing health care and sometimes life or death emergency aid, and add to that the extensive educational background and advanced degrees held by many ATCs, I think we can make a good argument that we are underpaid.”

The NBA referee thought that his ATC sister worked just as hard as he did, if not harder. I know that professional sports are big business, but aren’t the lives and health of our children just as important? As athletics become more and more popular with kids of all ages and the competition grows fiercer, I would like to see ATCs’ salaries commensurate with the services they provide, particularly in the school setting, which comes down to keeping our children safe.

For a copy of the salary survey, dial NATA’s fax on demand service at (888) 275-6282 document number 411, or for more information on athletic training, contact NATA: 2952 Stemmons Freeway, Dallas, TX 75247; (214) 637-6282; or via the Web: www.nata.org.

—Kristen Pratt Machado is no longer Editor of Rehab Management. Please address any correspondence to Sarah Schmelling, Senior Editor, at cwolski@medpubs.com.

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