Call for Proposals

Clinical Practice in Athletic Training: A Journal of Practice-based, Outcomes, and Action Research invites manuscripts for a special issue focused on quality improvement in athletic training and health care. Quality improvement is the framework to systematically improve patient care. Historically, athletic training has struggled to engage actively in value-based healthcare because we have failed to collect data that matters to patients and to effectively document our practice. Over the last decade or more, a call to collect patient and clinician-rated outcomes and improve documentation practices has prepared athletic health care providers to actively use data to drive practice.

This special issue is intended to promote quality improvement, point-of-care, and  clinical outcomes reports that demonstrate how athletic healthcare providers use data to drive practice and healthcare quality.

Quality improvement manuscripts should aim to address local or systems-based projects relative to clinical practice, outcomes from the projects, and actions taken since project implementation. An example of a quality improvement paper can be found here: Quality Improvement: Implementation of Individualized Concussion Patient Education and Rehabilitation Treatment Plans.

Point-of-care research aims to characterize clinical practice through the study of patients under routine conditions with the goal of improving patient care. An example of a point-of-care research paper can be found here: Point-of-Care Research: Retrospective Analysis of the Evaluation and Classification of Tendon Pathology in Athletic Training.

Clinical outcomes research helps to establish patient-oriented evidence that matters to evaluate clinical performance, establish the effectiveness of rehabilitation interventions, and guide clinical decisions for individualized care. An example of a clinical outcomes research paper can be found here: Clinician Versus Self-Administered Suboccipital Release on Superficial Backline Function.

We welcome submissions for this special issue until July 1, 2023 date. Any interested authors new to the publication and dissemination process should reach out to the Editor-in-Chief Lindsey Eberman or Managing Editor Matthew Rivera for support.