Patriot League Athletic Trainers Gather for a Joint Session of Learning

Athletic trainers are part of the “team around the team” and Venel Institute at Lehigh Valley Health Network recently hosted the best and brightest from around the Patriot League for what you could call a joint session of learning in more ways than one.

At Venel Institute, a world-class bioskills anatomical research and educational center in the Bethlehem area, athletic trainers got firsthand looks at dissections of cadaver knees, wrists, hands, shoulders, feet and ankles. The session was the kickoff of an annual two-day Patriot League athletic training meeting, hosted this year by Lehigh University. 

Lehigh Valley Orthopedic Institute, part of Lehigh Valley Health Network and Jefferson Health, is the sports medicine partner for two Patriot League schools in the Lehigh Valley, and the only two Division I schools – Lehigh University in Bethlehem and Lafayette College in Easton. Orthopedic Institute surgeons manned various stations in a Venel lab, dissecting various joints and explaining surgical techniques, while pointing out bones, nerves, muscles, tendons and ligaments. Athletic trainers rotated among the surgeon locations in the lab.

Participating Orthopedic Institute surgeons at Venel included:

• Daniel Terpstra, DO: head team doctor for the Lehigh Mountain Hawks specializing in complex shoulder and knee surgery as well as joint replacement

• Nicholas Slenker, MD: head team doctor for the Lafayette Leopards specializing in complex shoulder surgery, rotator cuff repair and Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) reconstruction

• Daniel Farber, MD: foot and ankle specialist who serves as vice chair, academic affairs, Lehigh Valley Orthopedic Institute

• Genoveffa Morway, DO: orthopedic hand specialist, including pediatric hand surgery

• Gene Yoo, DO: orthopedic sports medicine specialist and primary care sports medicine team doctor at Lehigh

“What these families donate for us is really special,” Dr. Slenker told attendees regarding the specimens they would be viewing. After cadavers and cadaver parts are used in the lab, they are cremated by the company that supplies them and the ashes returned to the family of the deceased.

Matt Bayly, director of sports medicine at Lafayette College, says learning events like the lab at Venel give athletic training staffs across the league the chance to hear the same information at the same time. Staffs at different schools routinely tap into one another’s experiences.

“Getting your hands onto a body part that you work with on a regular basis, it really helps your understanding,” Bayly says. “It’s basically like knowing the architecture or opening up an owner’s manual for your car.”

Bayly says the biggest opportunity for the athletic trainers from the Venel Institute experience was the ability to interact with the doctors. “There is a camaraderie there of the team around the team. The medical team is the team around the actual [sports] team itself,” he says. “Working hand in hand with the physicians like this, that brings everybody that much closer.”

The athletic training field has come a long way from decades ago when athletic trainers had a much more limited treatment role with student-athletes. Bayly says educational reforms, regulation and certification that came into play over the past 20 years have really expanded what athletic trainers can do to treat the whole person. 

The overall two-day meeting included instruction beyond the cadaver lab. Athletic trainers attended sessions on a host of topics, including suicide risk recognition and management and Achilles tendon rehabilitation. 

“The physical rehabilitation piece has come a very long way. The overall knowledge base of an athletic trainer is very different than it was many years ago. The scope of the domain has increased significantly,” he says. 

The National Athletic Trainers’ Association says athletic trainers are licensed or otherwise regulated in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It’s estimated there are nearly 60,000 board-certified athletic trainers nationwide at various levels of competition, including high school and college sports. 

Marco Giuliani, assistant director of athletics for sports medicine and director of sports medicine at Lehigh University, says the session at Venel was more than learning from the doctors. He said learning more about procedures and policies that support athletes at other Patriot League schools is always helpful.

“You’re on the same sidelines as they are and there may be a time where we need one another’s help with a student-athlete situation, so having that familiarity is very important,” Giuliani says.

The public, says Giuliani, may not be fully educated on just what athletic trainers do. “It’s the care and the stability of care we’re able to give these student athletes. When an athlete gets hurt, you’re only seeing them at their worst moment. They need someone who can be that sense of calm for them and we are that presence.”

Both Bayly and Giuliani say their staffs are routinely in contact with their team doctors, making sure care is coordinated and effective.

Books and computer models are not the same as working with actual specimens, says Dr. Terpstra. Seeing how things work also allows the athletic trainers to see the biomechanics of the joints. “This is a way more concise way to educate,” he says.

“It’s a really great environment for them to learn in because it’s challenging and exciting,” says Dr. Slenker. “They are the type of people that respond to that.”

Dr. Slenker says some athletic trainers have been working with LVHN doctors like him and Terpstra for a decade or more. “We’ve seen a lot together, grown a lot together. It’s a nice working relationship. The better they are, it really helps us take care of the athlete better,” he says. “I think we’re lucky because the staffs at Lehigh and Lafayette are really excellent.”

Dr. Terpstra says the relationships athletic trainers have with student-athletes are extremely helpful in putting treatment plans together.