As an athletic trainer, you spend your days healing, helping, and changing lives.

When you decided on this career path, you made a choice to be the best healthcare professional you could be—to be there for patients needing preventative services, clinical diagnoses, treatments, care, and emergency therapeutic intervention.

You made the choice to work long hours, up close and personal, and hands-on with the patients you care about. And no matter how long you’ve been in the industry—20 days or 20 years—you know just how intensely rewarding it can be to be an AT.

But like most careers that promise and offer fulfilling rewards and meaningful human connection, being an Athletic Trainer also comes hand-in-hand with taking on something even more serious—risk.

And this risk—often referred to as liability—has the ugly potential to reach in and touch all parts of your life—your career, your finances, your future, your personal life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how skilled, qualified, careful, or conscientious you are—just by signing on for the job of being an AT, you’re signing on for liability.

That’s why mitigating that risk in as many ways possible is so incredibly important.

We’re not saying that limiting your risk is easy and can always protect you from allegations and accusations, but by investing your time, energy, and finances into mitigation, you can diminish your chances of dealing with heavy risk that could weigh you down forever.

But how exactly do you start this process? What’s the first thing you should do as an AT to help cushion yourself against liability, reduce your risk, and mitigate the unavoidable?

We’re glad you asked. Our team of AT insurance professionals has teamed up to provide you with a comprehensive list that covers the basics of what you should know about risk and how you can start minimizing that risk right now.

Ready to mitigate risk where you can? We thought so. Keep reading and dive into our list of must-know tips!

Provide a Safe Environment

Often, risk comes in unexpected, unlikely, and improbable forms. And sometimes, that risk comes in the form of an unsafe environment. If your office—whether it’s in a healthcare facility or a private space in your home—isn’t safe, then you’re essentially swinging open your office door and welcoming in copious risk. And that’s the thing—safety isn’t just about having fire exits and well-lit rooms, it’s about small, minor things, too. Does that rug you decorated your office with tend to kink up and trip you? Odds are, it’ll catch for a patient, too. They trip, they fall, and then what? If they’re injured, it’s possible they’ll bring some litigation into it. It might happen, it might not—but that’s why we call it risk, right?

Our advice is simple—take a full-on audit of the environment you’re seeing patients in. Ask yourself some question—Is it safe? Does this environment make it harder to do my job? Can my patient injure themselves in this environment?

Be honest when you’re answering these questions, then address the issues—you’re on your way to mitigating risk.

Exercise Extreme Caution in Administering Treatments

We’re not insulting your skill, intelligence, or expertise with this one—we know that you’re a high-quality AT who knows what they’re doing. But you—like us—are a human, and humans make mistakes. You can minimize the chances of making a mistake—whether it’s silly or substantial— by reminding yourself before every treatment to exercise extreme caution. If it helps, repeat this phrase in your head before you do anything. It doesn’t say anything about your competency as an AT except that you care about your patients’ well-being above all else.

Establish Good Relationships

Your patients aren’t just data on your clipboard—they’re people. Treat them that way. The more appropriate connections you can make with your patients, the better your career will be. We’re not saying that just because you foster good relationships means you’re immune to risk—but showing your clients they can trust you can definitely help minimize risk.

Develop Specific Guidelines

Create strict protocols for your professional life and stick to them. Everyone’s regulations and guidelines will look different, but it’s crucial to take this step. Make sure that you’re coming up with meaningful rules that will help you routinely minimize liability—then, be intentional about sticking to those rules.

Communicate With Coaches

Don’t limit your communications to just patients or team members. Bring coaches—or whoever is “in charge of” players into the conversation—especially if they’re minors. It’s not likely that a patient or player would lie to you about what treatment they need, but informing everyone involved about your patient’s well-being, potential treatment, and timeline is going to help with transparency. And, of course, bringing in more people to fact-check you ensures that you’re protecting yourself against less than savory allegations.

Know Your Limits

Be aware of what you’re skilled at and what you’re not. Know who you can easily work with and who you can’t. Be fully honest and transparent about what’s in your professional repertoire and what falls outside of it. Choosing not to treat a patient or administer a treatment doesn’t make you a bad AT—in fact, it makes you a great AT. You’d rather admit where your limitations are than risk injuring or upsetting a patient, and that’s what’s going to set you apart.

Purchase Your Own Liability Insurance

This is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle—and we’re not just saying that because we’re an insurance company. Like we said, stuff happens. You could be the world’s most talented AT (and we’re sure you are), you could never make a mistake, and you could be essentially error-free—but the likelihood of someone filing a claim against you is still there.

With professional liability insurance, you’re essentially safeguarding yourself against the improbable, the unlikely, and what you believe to be impossible. Because honestly, risk is going to exist no matter what you do. And should something happen, you’ll want to be protected.

Also—we know exactly what you’re going to say next. You’re probably thinking that your employer has liability insurance, so you’re covered under their policy. That actually might be true, but how covered are you really?

Think about insurance like an umbrella. If your employer pays for liability insurance, they’re the ones holding the umbrella in their hand—you’re under there, too, but you’re standing a little off to the side. When the downpour starts, that umbrella is going to be sure to protect your employer—and it should, that’s exactly what it’s designed to do. But you, well, you’re more than likely going to be off to the side getting wet—and whether you’re just a little damp or totally drenched, well, you’re still kind of out of luck.

When you invest in your own liability insurance, you’re the one standing in the center of that umbrella, dry as a summer day in the desert, even as the storm rages outside.

Use Common Sense

You’re a skilled professional, but you’re also a competent person—if something seems risky, use your common sense and mitigate that risk. You don’t need to be in the AT business for decades to pick up on risks or bad calls—just use that beautiful brain of yours to make appropriate judgments.

Are you ready to invest in your liability mitigation strategy? We thought you might be. Here’s the truth of it all—there’s no one way to totally eliminate risk from your AT career. But you can make sure you’re safeguarding yourself, your career, and your future—especially when you invest in professional athletic trainer liability insurance.

At Athletic Trainer Insurance Plus, we’re here to be that safeguard. Want to learn more about how we can help? We wouldn’t have it any other way! Reach out to us (or check out our site right here) for more info!