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Athletic trainers may have had their roots on the playing field, but the profession has branched out. Large employers such as Toyota, General Motors, Delta Air Lines and Boeing have used athletic trainers for years to prevent and treat injuries on the production line and manufacturing floor.
While athletic trainers traditionally have worked in an athletic environment, a sprained ankle on a pro athlete is no different than a sprained ankle on a baggage handler at an airport, says Tom Bair, an athletic trainer with ProgressiveHealth Aviation Services in Atlanta.
Bair works primarily with the customer service division of Delta. The division employs about 6,000 people and includes gate agents, ticket agents and baggage handlers. He also works with employees in the airline's technical operations center, which includes the mechanics who repair and overhaul aircraft.
"Of all the health care professionals, we really work with the injuries from prevention through to rehabilitation," Bair says.
"We're everything from trying to prevent the injury to acute injury management if an injury occurs, to case management of the injury as it goes through the process with a physician, to rehabilitation of the injury and reconditioning and preparing the individual to return to work and regular activities of daily living," he adds.
A trainer's role
What an athletic trainer does depends largely on the environment in which they're working. With the baggage handlers at Delta, Bair...