Context: The core competencies of health care indicate that all medical professionals should provide patient-centered care (PCC), or care that is respectful and responsive to one's values and preferences, during each encounter.
Objective: To identify collegiate student-athletes' definition of PCC and measure their perceived level of PCC from an athletic trainer (AT).
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Setting: Mixed-method survey.
Patients or Participants: A total of 610 (age = 19 ± 1 year) NCAA student-athletes completed the survey.
Main Outcome Measure(s): The survey consisted of one open-ended question prompting the participant to define PCC in their own words. The quantitative data was gathered through the Global Perceptions of Athletic Trainer PCC tool which explored the overall agreement about the ATs use of PCC constructs. Finally, those participants who had received care from an AT completed the validated Patient Perception of Patient-Centeredness (PPPC) instrument. Qualitative analysis was completed through Text IQ™ technology from Qualtrics® with a mean sentiment score (MSS) attributed to each of the coded statements. We performed descriptive statistics for all quantitative data.
Results: The qualitative analysis revealed 13 topics in which the most used were individualized, priority, and best. Other topics were inconsistent with how the medical community has defined PCC. On the global agreement scale of PCC tool, the participants expressed a strong agreement (mode = 4) with 12 of the 15 statements. On the patient perception instrument, participants expressed that the AT was completely (mode = 4) patient-centered for all dimensions during their most recent encounter. However, the behaviors of PCC, defined by the medical community, may not be directly expressed from the viewpoint of a collegiate student-athlete.
Conclusions: Student-athletes defined PCC as individualized and prioritized health care. Additionally, student-athletes perceived that ATs provided care that kept their best interest in mind and practiced PCC during their encounters.