Reflective Thinking in Athletic Training Students

Context Athletic training students, part of the broader healthcare system, are expected to maintain knowledge and skill levels, including reflection. Once graduated, students need to continuously evaluate themselves as clinicians, thus requiring some skill in reflecting at different levels. Objective To examine athletic training students’ level of reflective thinking in academic programs. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Web-based survey. Patients or Other Participants Athletic training students ( N = 126) currently enrolled in professional bachelor’s, professional master’s, postprofessional master’s, clinical doctorate, research doctorate, or residency/fellowship programs. Data Collection and Analysis Participants rated the 16-item Likert-style Reflective Thinking Survey on their experiences in their current program. The items were subdivided into 4 subscales: habitual action, understanding, reflection, and critical reflection. We used the Kruskal-Wallis test to assess individual items against participants’ current academic programs, followed by Mann-Whitney U post hoc tests due to nonnormality. Results We found differences between “In this course, we do things so many times that I started doing them without thinking about it” ( H 4 = 21.79, P < .001) and “This course has challenged some of my firmly held ideas” ( H 4 = 15.83, P = .003). Post hoc analysis showed differences on “…do things so many times…without thinking…” between professional bachelor’s and postprofessional master’s students ( U = 20.50, P = .001), professional bachelor’s and clinical doctorate students ( U = 135.0, P = .003), and professional master’s and postprofessional master’s students ( U = 56.5, P < .001). Differences were found between professional bachelor’s and clinical doctorate students ( U = 131.0, P = .003) and between professional master’s and clinical doctorate students ( U = 158.0, P < .001) on the item “…challenged some of my firmly held ideas.” Conclusions Professional-level students reflected more on firmly held ideas, indicating more challenge with new knowledge exposure. Educators should, themselves, reflect on their goals when evaluating for a certain level of reflection and consider their program’s overall goals for preparing future and current athletic training students for practice.