Athletic training students' engagement in interprofessional education in the classroom and during clinical education

Interprofessional education is an area of emphasis within healthcare. Little is known regarding what other healthcare professions athletic training students engage with during interprofessional education. Therefore, our purpose was to identify the healthcare students that athletic training students engage with in the classroom/laboratory and during clinical education. We used a cross-sectional survey design with open-ended questions to survey 90 athletic training program directors. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and an analysis of variance to determine differences between demographic characteristics and engagement with other healthcare students in the classroom/laboratory and during clinical education. The alpha level was set at .05. Overall, athletic training students regularly engaged with students from other healthcare professions in the classroom/laboratory and during clinical education, with physical therapy and nursing being most common. Unfortunately, more than 30% of respondents indicated no engagement with other healthcare professions during clinical education or in the classroom. It was concluded that athletic training faculty need to capitalize on opportunities to expose athletic training students to other healthcare students, as well as utilizing teaching and evaluation strategies that foster interprofessional education and practice. Similarly, students need to capitalized on opportunities to engage in interprofessional practice.