Ethical Issues in Athletic Training

No matter your career, you will eventually run into a situation where an ethical or moral decision has to be made. I am planning on going into athletic training where many ethical dilemmas will surround the health or actions dealing with athletes. Here are three different scenarios I could face as an athletic trainer and how I would resolve each ethical issue.
The state championships in basketball are coming up and the boys’ team has a chance at taking state. The star of the team is a senior, he is at the start of his career and is looking to sign with the university in the neighboring town. He comes to you, as his athletic trainer, in confidence that his sophomore year he tried steroids, just once, but hasn’t touched them again. As an athletic trainer what do you do? He only used them once, two years ago. Do you tell the coach, which could take the player off the team and maybe ruin his chance to play at the university or do you give him the talk again about how steroids can ruin his career and choose not tell the coach because the athlete isn’t currently using them and it was a dumb mistake two years ago?
As an athletic trainer my job and duty is to protect and treat the athletes. Make sure they are safe to play in the games preventing injury and if injury occurs to help them heal and keep back to the sport. If an athlete came and told me and said that, we would sit down together and talk about all the consequences that can occur from what he did in the past and how it can and will affect him now. Just because it was in the past doesn’t mean there aren’t still consequences. In this instance I can see two decisions, tell the coach or not tell the coach. If I tell the coach it could cost them the chance of winning state and the...

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...time the athlete is just fine, but there is the small chance that the brain injury is worse than it appears. If I were in this situation, to me the health of the athlete is more important than winning a game. If the blow was an extremely hard hit than I would be worried for further injury of the brain, such as swelling and bleeding.
It would be hard to hold my ground, but I would explain to the athlete that there could be further damage that we aren’t seeing. We don’t want of risk anything so we are going to hold you on the side lines for another 5-10 min. and then re perform the tests and compare the results. If there is any sign of brain damage than he is out for the rest of the game. If the test are once again all negative and he feels fine without any headaches or balance troubles than we can reassess the situation and see if he is able to go back into the game.