Sierra Yoakum
CHS 494:
Blog #1
September 6, 2012
Agency Overview:
History-
The univeristy has a state of the art medical space and state of the art technology to help the athletes in
the programs here on campus. “The University of Nevada athletic trainers and medical staff play a major
role in maintaining the health and physical well-being of all Nevada student athletes. The staff is
committed to the prevention, evaluation, care and rehabilitation of injuries while working with
personnel in physical therapy, strength and conditioning and nutrition.”, found on the Nevada athletic
website under the sports medicine tab. http://www.nevadawolfpack.com/ot/unv-sports-medicine.html
The entire program is to help an athlete perform at his/her best.
Some of the key roles in the program are maintianing proper nutrituion for atheletes so they can
perform at their best. We also take care and manage injuries, this is through prevention and
rehabilitation. Preventiitve measure we take consist of taping, bracing, stretching and try to take care of
the aches and pains befoere they become a majore issue. After injuries have occurred we take the
necessary measures to have them see a doctor and take the next step in recovering. This can consist of
rehabilitation or surgery and then rehabilitation, all depending on the doctors opinion.
The organization consists of mulitple doctors who work with all the sports, each doctor has a specialty,
for example, shoulders or knees. We have a doctor who is the university doctor, her name is Dr. Carol
Scott. Dr. Scott works with all the teams and travels with the teams when needed. In the athletic
training room each sport has a certified trainer who is incharge of their sport. There are also three
graduate assistants who assit the certified athletic trainers. Working with football we have a head
athletic trainer, and asstistant athletic trainer, a graduate asstistnt and multiple student interns. The
football programs is the largest with staffing do to the amount of players we have on the roster.
Project overview:
In my project I will be demonstrating the daily life of an athletic trainer, this will consist of getting
players back from injuries, getting players ready for game/practice and how we manage to do all of this
on the road and not in our own facilities. The overall goal is to show how staying in the health field can
bring you an exciting and rewarding job. This job is never the same, each day brings you a new
challenge.
To reach this goal I will show how we manage to bring an athlete who is injured back to play. How to
take an athlete after an injury, build their confidence and athletic ability to go back out and succeed.
This will be done through rehab and appropriate technology to get the job done. In this job you learn to
target each muscle to improve the athlete; this could be through stretch or active rehabilitation. This
helps with learning anatomy and how each muscle works and fires. Working rehabs you watch and learn
how a muscle can build back up and strengthen with active rehab and modalities; modalities consist of
ultrasound or stim (electric current).
We will be bringing light to the upcoming career of an athletic trainer, show how each day is never the
same. It is a growing field and is essential for athletes to keep performing to their abilities. The job has
long hours and can be grueling, but it is rewarding to see an athlete back on the field competing after an
injury or surgery.