Article Text
Abstract
Background First-aid is a recommended injury prevention and risk management strategy in community sport; however, little is known about the sport-specific competencies required by first-aid providers.
Objective To achieve expert consensus on the competencies required by community Australian Football (community-AF) sports trainers.
Study design A three-round online Delphi process.
Setting Community-AF.
Participants 16 Australian sports first-aid and community-AF experts.
Outcome measures Rating of competencies as either ‘essential’, ‘expected’, ‘ideal’ or ‘not required’.
Results After Round 3, 47 of the 77 (61%) competencies were endorsed as ‘essential’ or ‘expected’ for a sports trainer to effectively perform the activities required to the standards expected at a community-AF club by ≥75% of experts. These competencies covered: the role of the sports trainer; the responsibilities of the sports trainer; emergency management; injury and illness assessment and immediate management; taping; and injury prevention and risk management. Four competencies (5%) were endorsed as ‘ideal’ or ‘not required’ by ≥85% of experts and were excluded from further consideration. The 26 competencies where consensus was not reached were retained as second-tier, optional competencies.
Conclusions Sports trainers are important members of on-field first-aid teams, providing support to both injured players and other sports medicine professionals. The competencies identified in this study provide the basis of a proposed two-tiered community-AF–specific sports trainer education structure that can be implemented by the peak sports body. This includes six mandatory modules, relating to the ‘required’ competencies, and a further six optional modules covering competencies on which consensus was not reached.
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Footnotes
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Funding This project was funded by a grant from the Australian Football League (AFL) Research Board. CFF was supported by an NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship (ID: 565900). AD was funded by the AFL grant during the conduct phase and an NHMRC Project Grant (ID: 565907) during the write-up phase.
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Competing interests None.
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Ethics approval The study was approved by the University of Ballarat Human Research Ethics Committee.
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Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.