Abstract
The Dissertation of Clinical Practice Improvement highlights the major constructs of the Doctorate of Athletic Training (DAT) program, including the need for scholarship that leads to professional growth and a focus of action research that displays clinical outcomes of professional practice. My scholarship and professional growth began with the creation of a Plan of Advanced Practice (PoAP), outlined in Chapter 2 that captured my strengths, weaknesses, and goals (along with accomplishments) for advancing my clinical professional practice within the DAT and for the next 5-10 years of professional practice. Through the PoAP, I reflected on the desire to improve my patient care through the utilization of new interventions and paradigms while reflecting upon the need to improve my clinical setting (the secondary school setting) to provide quality patient care. In Chapter 3, I present clinical patient-oriented outcomes while within the DAT program that focused on learning and implementing new interventions into my own clinical practice. Chapter 4 is a literature review that synthesizes the current and previous research related to athletic trainers in the secondary school setting and research relating to the study and improvement of quality health care in other medical fields. Once the problems and needs for improvement in the secondary school setting were addressed, I focused the majority of my research project, Chapter 5, on performing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the secondary school setting from a third-party stakeholder's perception of the athletic training services. The research study was through an action research process that deals with real problems and real-life situations by evaluating the local effectiveness of professional practice based on the interpreter's individual paradigm, and then the practitioner can create an outstanding solution to a local issue that can be used everywhere. After performing the research study, I was able to determine the focus of stakeholders in the secondary school setting in regards to the athletic trainer's time spent on duties related to patient care.