Protecting and ensuring an athlete is safe and healthy is the responsibility of an athletic trainer, which is similar to that of a team physician. In the case of an athletic trainer who is treating an athlete with an injury, several legal duties exist as a result of the athletic trainer/athlete relationship.



There are a number of potential recognized legal duties of a trainer or a team physician. These duties include that they need to:

* Properly assess the athlete's condition

* Provide or obtain proper medical treatment

* Provide clearance to participate

*Inform the athlete of the risks of athletic participation given the particular medical condition

Legal Duty

There have also been a number of legal cases that have focused on the duty of the athletic trainer to a student-athlete. Whether a legal duty has been breached is assessed from the athletic trainer's adherence to accepted sports medicine practice.

This is known as the "reasonable person standard," because an athletic trainer is expected to act as a reasonable athletic trainer would under the same or similar circumstance. However, specific circumstances are taken into consideration when legal action occurs because of the varying ways, places and resources that are available to athlete trainers.

Since an athletic trainer is a sports medicine professional they are held to the level of care that a reasonable sports medicine professional would be held to in a similar situation. This standard of care is usually established by expert testimony and is based on national athletic training certification boards, standardized training programs, certification programs, and state licensing requirements.

A certified athletic trainer must act with the skill and knowledge that is reasonable for the profession.

One of the difficulties of determining the legal standard of care for athletic trainers in dealing with athletes who suffer serious injuries is the lack of a universally accepted legal standard for proper assessment and prescribed treatment of the injury.

Although sports medicine researchers do not universally endorse any specific grading scale, the scales do provide legal guidelines for a reasonable standard of care to be used by athletic trainers. However, data indicates that most athletic trainers do not even use these guidelines when assessing an athletes' head injuries. An additionally important mention is that legally, a trainer and their actions shouldn't compare to what an average athletic trainer may do in similar situations.

Because many practices of a a trainer may be outdated, the law becomes a bit hazy when it comes down to optimal medicinal care for sports injuries. Just because most athletic trainers may evaluate an athletes' head injuries on a hunch it does not mean that it is legally reasonable to do so.

A recent study showed that almost one third of football players who experience a concussion were held out of play for only 14 minutes. This is an amazing fact given that the grading scales for injuries generally recommend that an athlete who has suffered a minor head injury needs to remain on the sidelines for at least 20 minutes.

This behavior cannot be considered reasonable because, legally, the arguement may be based on the most current scientific knowledge. According to the proper scale, for example, if a similar case of this nature goes to a jury then they may consider these actions less reasonable if evidence is presented that 14 percent of these individuals received grade two concussions.

All serious sports accidents/injuries should be throughly investigated at the time of the event. If the injury may have been caused due to any type of negligence on another's part legal guidance may be required.