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Keywords

Health Care Competency, Health Professions Education

Abstract

Context: Developing athletic training students’ soft skills to effectively engage in patient-centered care is integrated throughout multiple Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education Curricular Content Standards. Despite evidence supporting the importance of compassionate care, there is currently data to suggest that health care is experiencing a compassion crisis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways pre-professional athletic training students transfer knowledge from a soft skills curriculum to clinical experiences as students in an entry level master’s program.

Methods: This study is an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. Phase 1 includes participants (n = 19) enrolled in a pre-professional athletic training (AT) course. Phase 2 included the same participants, now entry-level master athletic training students. The quantitative questionnaires used are the Jefferson Empathy Scale-HPS and the Compassion Scale. Qualitatively, participants completed bi-weekly reflection logs describing empathy and compassion encounters during their clinical experience. A repeated-measures ANOVA calculated the students’ empathy and compassion composite at 3 timepoints. Reflection logs were coded with a constant comparative analysis.

Results: The quantitative results revealed statistical significance within the students’ development of empathy and the compassion construct of kindness. The qualitative results revealed that students applied empathy by connecting with their patients through lived experiences and the ability to stay out of judgment when listening to patients. The students described using compassion by reassuring their patients that they were not going to endure their injury alone and that a support system is in place.

Conclusions: Ultimately, this study investigated the ways in which pre-professional AT students transferred knowledge from a soft skills curriculum to patient care during their first clinical experience. Incorporating soft skills into an AT curriculum has the potential to improve students’ application of empathy and compassion and improve therapeutic relationships during patient care.

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