Steins, R.; Breitbach, A.P.; Ross, M.; Ciarlo, E.; Melillo, E.; Brant, O. It Takes a Team—Enhancing Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being through an Interprofessional Approach. Sports2024, 12, 209.
Steins, R.; Breitbach, A.P.; Ross, M.; Ciarlo, E.; Melillo, E.; Brant, O. It Takes a Team—Enhancing Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being through an Interprofessional Approach. Sports 2024, 12, 209.
Steins, R.; Breitbach, A.P.; Ross, M.; Ciarlo, E.; Melillo, E.; Brant, O. It Takes a Team—Enhancing Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being through an Interprofessional Approach. Sports2024, 12, 209.
Steins, R.; Breitbach, A.P.; Ross, M.; Ciarlo, E.; Melillo, E.; Brant, O. It Takes a Team—Enhancing Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being through an Interprofessional Approach. Sports 2024, 12, 209.
Abstract
Effective teamwork is essential to the success of sport and athletic organizations. Interprofessional Collaboration (IPC) and team-based care has also been identified as a priority for health and social care organizations.(World Health Organization, 2010) The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Core Competencies of (1) Values and Ethics; (2) Roles and Responsibilities; (3) Communication; and (4) Teams and Teamwork provide a guiding framework for IPC. (Interprofessional Education Collaborative, 2023). Student-athlete well-being is a key objective for individuals working with or for university athletic departments, with high levels of well-being being correlated with sport, academic, and personal improvements (Navarro et al., 2020). Due to the multifaceted factors that influence student-athlete well-being (e.g., cultural factors, coaches, academic pressure, family stress, etc.), there is an increasing need for an interdisciplinary/interprofessional approach to well-being (Lemelin et al., 2022, Navarro et al., 2020; Ulrich et al., 2022) However, significant barriers exist in implementing IPC into university athletic departments and little research exists on how to overcome roadblocks to integrating IPC in university athletic departments for enhancing student-athlete wellness. This paper will describe how a university athletic department used a team approach to enhance student-athlete health and well-being. The Interprofessional Wellness Team (IWT) included a clinical sport psychology doctoral student, a licensed mental health professional, athletic trainer, and sport dietitian. A case vignette is used to demonstrate how IPEC core competencies are operationalized by the team to address athlete health and well-being through IPC. Recommendations on the further implementation of IPC centered around student-athlete well-being will be provided.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.