Change Is Hard: Adopting a Disablement Model for Athletic Training (Commentary) (Essay‪)‬

We have heard skepticism from both our researcher and clinician colleagues about the value of and need for clinical outcomes assessment and evidence-based practice (EBP). Some clinicians think a move toward outcomes assessment and EBP is an admission that the current care provided by athletic trainers (ATs) is inadequate. Furthermore, some clinicians are naturally nervous that conducting outcomes research is too time consuming to be practical, too complicated to be done correctly, or both. Additionally, some scholars minimize the importance of both outcomes assessment and EBP by claiming they are just another form of research design or methods, no more or less important than any other form of research. We directly challenge all these notions and suggest that the benefits to both patient care and the standing of the athletic training profession that flow from engagement in clinical outcomes assessment and EBP by both clinicians and researchers far outweigh the concerns identified previously. Ongoing improvement of patient care must be a central locus of all health professions and is a continuous effort toward a goal that is never truly achieved in an absolute sense. Suggesting that clinical outcomes assessment is no more or less important than other forms of research ignores the fact that providing services to our patients is the primary purpose of our profession. Therefore, efforts aimed at directly measuring and improving those services are of prima facie importance to athletic training as a profession and become the responsibility of all ATs, including clinicians, researchers, and educators. However, to put it even more bluntly, we have no choice. The health care system has decided for us that these are expectations for all contemporary health care professionals. And although we strongly disagree with all 3 opinions, the contention that clinical outcomes assessment and EBP are difficult, time consuming, and even passe is irrelevant.