Becca Bellamy

I would say a good support system and community. If I didn't have, especially my parents, I've been a single mom since my daughter was pretty much born. And so to have that support system, I wouldn't be able to be where I am today, and I wouldn't have been able to go back to school and get my degree. So yeah, I would say community and support, my support system, for sure.

I would say, especially for athletic training, when you get out for your first time, not being surrounded by other certified athletic trainers that are there to kind of catch you if you fall, I think just faking it till you make it, like just using your education and trusting yourself that you are going to be just fine. You know, if you're out there and you're kind of frozen, not knowing what to do, and someone has a fractured leg, then you're kind of in trouble, so you just kind of have to use your training and trust in yourself. Yeah, having that confidence is key. You could get out there and you start doubting yourself, and you know, someone's sitting there with a fractured leg, and it's like, well, you better just do it, because otherwise they're just gonna be sitting there.

It's easy to get really wrapped up in the struggles of this career and kind of feeling like you're putting more than what you're getting out of. But I think the best advice I could give is just remember why you chose that career in the first place. Because people that typically come into our career, especially women, because we a lot of times do have more empathy, and that's usually a big drive of why we go get into this career pathway, is that don't forget that is something that's very needed, and that a lot of times women do it the best, I guess.

Some of the biggest challenges I would say is the acknowledgement of an athletic trainer's worth. We're still really kind of struggling for employers to kind of see the value of athletic training, and obviously kind of being able to get the compensation that we deserve. There's still a huge discrepancy, especially the biggest thing that I notice with educating my students who are interested in athletic training. It's kind of backwards, where high school athletic trainers actually are being valued a little bit more and compensated a little bit more, whereas when you get into more collegiate and professional, the salary that you think that you would be making at a higher level is actually a lot lower. So I think just the value around athletic training is one of the most challenging things within our career. It's kind of hard to prove your value and your worth. For example, I've worked for Providence Medical Center, and they actually had a sports medicine program. And one of the first things they cut, because they were trying to save some money, was our program. And one reason for that is it's really hard to show the value of athletic trainers when it comes to a monetary perspective, when you're outsourcing to high schools, where they don't see a direct connection of income, even though as we're working with athletes and referring, if they were able to correlate how much we actually refer athletes and how much athletes end up coming to their hospital and getting x-rays or MRIs or treatment from doctors, it's hard to associate that. So when it comes to hard numbers, that is where there's that disconnect.

I think trust and honesty. Honesty and clarity, especially when it comes to working with athletes, and not trying to sugarcoat too much. I think empathy as well. Empathy is huge and very needed, especially for what I do.