Sports Medicine Conference

On April 1, 2022, I attended an Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Conference at the Overland Park Convention Center. I was most amazed at the number of people there and that they were all seemingly willing to learn. Not only were they willing to learn, but learn from their fellow colleagues. They all had so much respect for every speaker and instructor. It was really cool to see that even when they are considered professionals in their careers, physicians in orthopedics or sports medicine from all over wanted to further their knowledge of the fields. I was so impressed by all of the speakers as well. They were taking time out of their days to help other people understand their own thought processes and tricks in athletic training or orthopedics. I would say I gained some good knowledge myself by listening to all of the wonderful speakers.

The conference was a whole day thing. I only went from 11:45 to 2:50, but still found the conference to be very informative. I walked in while the main speaker, Rick Burkholder. He is the head athletic trainer for the KC Chiefs. He was very interesting to listen to. All of his points made me question my biases and some of my beliefs about professional athletes treatments. I had always thought that pro athletes were just told to be healthy and they were, but that is not the case. They need the same communication skills from their athletic trainer that a regular High School student would need. It really stood out to me how much he talked about communication actually. He made it a point that without good communication with the players, nothing will get done, and how sometimes you have to let other people communicate to athletes better you could have to make sure they get healed.