Grief - Who Helps Us?

 

As athletic trainers we are educated to react and respond to a multiple of scenarios.  Students have courses in prevention, management, acute care, rehabilitation, evidence-based medicine, administration and professional development.  Educators constantly prepare students by asking - “What do we do if?” or “What do we do when?”  

I am not sure how much we prepare ATS to process  tragic situations when they occur.  Certainly, in educational programs we are to cover content that deals with loss – but oftentimes, that is framed as to how our patients will handle loss – the loss of a season due to injury, the loss of the function of a body part, the loss of a game.  I don’t feel we educate enough on how we as ATs, will also be grieving in tragic events, and we too, may need assistance to develop healthy coping mechanisms.

This news article, I believe, highlights the need for ATs to also consider what is done for themselves to healthfully handle tragic situations that may arise in our professional lives.  Hayden Walton was a healthy 13 year old boy, who was struck in the chest while playing baseball.  This strike interrupted his heart rhythm, and although paramedics arrived to the scene to assist, Hayden died the next day.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/06/04/2011-06-04_13yearold_little_leaguer_hayden_walton_dies_after_being_hit_in_the_chest_with_ba.html 

   

I know there was not an AT who provided health care in this news story, but imagine that instead of this being summer baseball, this was a high school athlete.  Imagine the AT was there to provide assistance – to do everything they had been trained to do  - and the outcome was still the same.  I do not feel we have a support system ‘built-in’ the professional framework.  Too often, ATs are left on their own to attempt to process the loss.  Perhaps it is time for the profession to model something similar to the profession of nursing – specifically oncology nursing in which there are networks of support built into their daily work life.

This topic had affected me so much that I wrote a manuscript with a few other colleagues and had accepted into the ATEJ.  I am placing that link here should you want to read.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0By8pw-qzu2AZMmM2ZGZhMjMtN2RjOC00MjJhLWFiN2MtZmIzOWU0YjZiOTZk&hl=en_US