Selected Podcast

MarinHealth’s Athletic Training

Working with a Certified Athletic Trainer can help keep athletes focused, motivated, and healthy. That's why the Center for Integrative Health & Wellness at MarinHealth Medical Center offers Certified Athletic Trainers for high schools, tournaments, camps, and club team sports. Our Athletic Trainers use their clinical expertise, a patient-centered approach, and evidence-based practice to complement the coaching and athletic program.

Listen as Christian "Kit" Holsten, ATC, MarinHealth Medical Center Athletic Trainer, discusses MarinHealth Medical Center's new Athletic Training Program and what an athletic trainer can do for you and the community.
MarinHealth’s Athletic Training
Featuring:
Christian "Kit" Holsten, ATC
Christian, who commonly goes by the name of Kit, is a graduate of Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, where she earned a B.S. in Athletic Training, and a B.A. in Kinesiology. As an Athletic Trainer, Kit has worked with athletes in volleyball, soccer, football, basketball, softball, baseball, golf, swimming, rugby, and lacrosse. Previously working specifically in sports rehabilitation, she is also a Massage Therapist. Kit has worked with a range of athletes from pre-adolescents to professional athletes in many different sports, as well as professional musicians, firefighters and policemen. Kit is known for her passionate interest in her patients, and her desire to continue her education and to extend her understanding in order to provide the best possible care.
Kit grew up in the small town of Palmer, Alaska, before moving abroad. She attended international schools in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Karachi, Pakistan, and Santiago, Chile, balancing academics with sports such as volleyball, soccer, and basketball. She was still in high school when she knew her career was going to combine sports and medicine.
Transcription:

Bill Klaproth (Host): Working with a Certified Athletic Trainer can help keep athletes focused, motivated, and healthy. That’s why the Center for Integrative Health and Wellness at Marin General Hospital offers Certified Athletic Trainers as a complement to coaching and athletic programs. Here to talk with us about the Athletic Training Program at Marin General Hospital, is Christian Holsten, ATC, Marin General Hospital Athletic Trainer. Christian, thank you for your time. Who is it you mainly work with? Is it high schools, and camps, and club team sports?

Christian Holsten (Guest): Currently, we work with local Marin High schools, but we also do offer services at local camps – sports camps, like Nike Camps.

Bill: Okay, very good. So that’s the gamut of who you work with, high schools, tournaments, right, and club team sports. And what are the main services you provide?

Christian: We provide anything from on-sight recognition, evaluation, and immediate treatment of injuries and illnesses, and then we make the medical referrals out based on the injury or illness the athlete has. We do all of the first aid, emergency care. We assess injuries, illnesses. We do return to play protocol, so if an athlete is recovering from an injury, we want to make sure they’re safe enough to get back onto the field or court. We do emergency action plans. We do preventative care. We do a lot of different things [LAUGHTER].

Bill: It sounds like everything to keep the athlete healthy before a potential injury or even during, it sounds like you’re on the field or the sidelines as the games are taking place.

Christian: Yes, yes, we are. If you ever see somebody at a football game run out on an injury, that’s probably an athletic trainer.

Bill: Right, so let’s talk about prevention. What do you do to help athletes prevent injury?

Christian: At the high school level, I work with all of my coaches on preventative care, so that when they’re doing their strength and conditioning, they’re doing it correctly and properly – that they’re not creating places of injury, that they are preventing them. And then we also work one-on-one with students – I’m working with a couple students at my high school right now in the summertime doing injury prevention and overall health. The athletes are learning how to take care of their body healthily and correctly so that they train so they can perform at their optimal level.

Bill: Well, that’s very, very important. And then, if someone does sustain an injury, you design and implement a treatment and rehabilitation plan? Tell us about that.

Christian: If for example, a student comes in and has suffered some kind of musculoskeletal injury, I will do an evaluation. If I feel like it needs to have a medical referral, I will send them out to a medical doctor for that diagnosis and treatment that the medical doctor can provide. We work with orthopedic surgeons here in Marin County. But, then I also provide the rehab and injury care on-sight at the high schools. We end up saving families a great deal of money and time because I’m there on campus. We can also make their recovery process based on their sport that they can return to their sport faster and healthy.

Bill: Right, and part of being a Certified Athletic Trainer is obviously helping athletes achieve peak performance. Could you talk to us about any clinics or educational workshops you provide?

Christian: In the summertime, we provide one-on-one education and training programs. We also do small groups anywhere from two to three to up to nine. We also reach out to club teams and organizations here in Marin and offer them an education. We’re working with some running clinics, and working with them about how to train correctly and the running form, so they don’t cause injury, and what to do if they do have an injury happen. We also do a lot of concussion education. We are very much a part of educating the community as a whole about what concussions are and how to take care of them properly.

Bill: And Christian, do you also offer sports specific technique clinics too?

Christian: Yes, yes, we do. At the high school level especially, a lot of these kids want to see a future in the sport. Some of them are very, very talented and are looking to go to college on some type of scholarship. We do sports specific training so that they learn how to get those gains within their sport. How a football player trains versus a volleyball player or a water polo player, is very different. With each individual athlete, we can sit down and say, “This is where you’re at. This is how we should train to get you to where you want to be.”

Bill: It sounds like you work with a wide range of athletes in a wide range of sports.

Christian: Yeah [LAUGHTER]. I believe at most high schools you have anywhere from ten to fifteen different sports.

Bill: Wow, so that keeps you busy?

Christian: Yes, very busy.

Bill: Well, Christian, can you tell us about the certifications you have to go through to become a Certified Athletic Trainer?

Christian: Athletic trainers are allied health care professionals, so we go through a very rigorous training program. It used to be a Bachelor’s only program, but slowly, over the years, it’s become a Master’s program, and this next year it’s going to become a Master’s only. It’s very much like you go to school for physical therapy. You would go off to college, and you would do a pre physical therapy degree. Now, it’s going to be a pre-athletic training degree. You take classes like kinesiology, nutrition, exercise physiology, emergency care – you can go get your first aid certification. Then, you’re going to have to apply for a program, and it’s anywhere from two to three years long where we focus in on preventative services, emergency care, clinical diagnosis, therapeutic intervention, rehab, recognizing medical conditions, and then we sit a national level board exam to become certified within the United States. Most individual states, you have to become licensed as health care professionals. Sadly, California is the only state that does not require that. Here in the State of California, at Marin General, where we really make sure that every athletic trainer we hire is a Certified Athletic Trainer.

Bill: Very specialized training to be in this field?

Christian: Yes, very.

Bill: Well, you’ve got to go from sports prevention to actual injury treatment, so you’ve got to know both before and after?

Christian: Um-hum, and it’s all evidence-based practice, so we constantly have to go back and get continuing education classes. We always have to go back and read the current information and research that’s coming out so that we’re providing the best care to our students and our athletes and patients as a whole.

Bill: And the best care is what everybody is after. Speaking of that, you touched on this earlier; concussions are a very big topic for contact sports. Can you tell us about Concussion Smart Marin?

Christian: Concussion Smart Marin is an organization here in Marin County that includes nine different organizations. We are working on a concussion protocol that is just for Marin. It’s taking information from the CDC, from leading concussion researchers internationally and based here in the United States, and we’re providing the best care possible in our protocols at our school. We have Marin County Office of Education, Marin County School of Nurses, the Health and Human Services of Marin County. We’ve got us, Marin General Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, Novato Community Hospital is all part of it. The Schurig Center for Brain Injury and Recovery is part of it. We do touch into the athletics because that’s where we get a lot of concussions here in the county is athletics, so we have Marin Athletic Foundation a part of it as well.

Bill: Well, thanks for explaining that to us. And as we wrap this up, what else should a young athlete know about injury prevention and maximizing their performance?

Christian: The best thing that they could do is go to their local high school athletic trainer and talk to them. Ask them your questions, make sure you’re getting the information from the right sources. Health and fitness research is so huge, and there’s so much information that the kids have access to – I have a lot of students who go to BodyBuilder.com to learn how to train properly, but that’s not them as athletes. Go and ask your questions to your physician, to your athletic trainer, to the A.D. at your school and find the right people to talk to so you learn how to do it correctly and you don’t promote illness to your body – or injury promotion to your body – that you’re coming in, and you’re talking to the right people.

Bill: Great advice, Christian, and thank you, so much for sharing that with us. For more information, visit MarinGeneral.org, that’s MarinGeneral.org. This is the Healing Podcast brought to you by Marin General Hospital. I’m Bill Klaproth. Thanks for listening.