Emergency Skills in Athletic Training: Perceived Knowledge and Continuing Education

Abstract

Context Continuing education (CE) in health care, particularly in athletic training, often fails to meet the needs of its participants. Rapid increases in available information make it necessary for CE to be delivered as efficiently as possible. Objective To explore whether an interactive teaching strategy and various characteristics of athletic trainers affected the perceived knowledge of emergency skills among certified athletic trainers. Design Quasiexperimental study with a single-group pretest-posttest design. Patients or Other Participants Certified athletic trainers (N = 81) at the Great Lakes Athletic Trainers' Association Annual Meeting and Symposium. Intervention(s) Emergency skills practice session for anaphylaxis, opioid overdose, diabetes, and asthma. Main Outcome Measure(s) Participants completed a preintervention perceived knowledge questionnaire (PKQ) that included background information questions and completed a postintervention PKQ. Results A statistically significant difference (P < .001) in PKQ scores from pretest to posttest was found with pretest scores being lower than posttest scores (89.59 and 103.02, respectively). Age and years of experience had a weak correlation with PKQ pretest scores (rs = .32 and rs = .33, respectively). Participant characteristics including additional certification (P = .012), anaphylaxis experience (P = .036), opioid overdose experience (P < .001), diabetes experience (P = .025), and combined emergency experience (P = .029) had significantly different pretest PKQ scores. Conclusions The use of an interactive teaching strategy in CE and certain athletic trainer characteristics significantly affected athletic trainers' perceived knowledge of emergency skills.