Clinicians' Expectations and Their Impact on an Athlete's Compliance in Rehabilitation

Abstract

Researchers have explored instructors' expectations and found them to be matched by students' achievements, as the teachers' expectations became self-fulfilling prophecies. In this paper, the intuitive parallel is drawn between the student-teacher relationship and the athlete-clinician relationship. The purpose of the article is to examine the conceivable implications of a clinician's expectations and an athlete's compliance with a rehabilitation regimen. The Pygmalion effect may have critical implications for clinicians in the rehabilitation setting. The expectation and compliance relationship is further explored through Martinek's attributional model of teacher expectancy effects, which has been adapted to fit the athlete-clinician relationship. A self-assessment checklist has been constructed to augment the clinician's awareness about the self-fulfilling prophecy and its likely ramifications. Information for clinicians about possible Pygmalion effects in the athletic training room and a framework for future research are presented.