| Professionals are empowered by the public to make discretionary judgements due to the nature of their specialized knowledge and training. Inherent in this empowerment however is the risk that these judgements may result in unexpected or unwanted outcomes that may lead to litigation. The purpose of this study was to develop and examine a methodology for use by collegiate athletic trainers, who are allied health care professionals, to aid in the development in policies and procedures, a necessary risk management tool.;The methodology developed in this study had five stages: identifying the law, finding the law, limiting the law, analyzing the law and developing policy and procedure recommendations from the law. The study applied this methodology to 21 cases in three areas of law identified as important by collegiate athletic trainers: emergencies, natural environment and medical documentation. The analysis sought to determine what omissions or commissions contributed to the litigation, what patterns existed in those omissions/commission, and what policy and procedure implications could be identified. Additionally the method was analyzed to determine its relationship to policy and procedure development in general.;Results indicated that a total of 97 omissions or commission and were identified for the three areas of study. When patterns were analyzed a total 26 policy and procedure statements emerged. These statements were evaluated in relation to the NATABOC Role Delineation Study (1999), and 96% of the policies identified were found, a result suggesting that the methodology is effective in identifying policy and procedure recommendations for any profession that has a similar document.;Conclusions drawn from this study included modifying the method used to find the law, and deleting the stage limiting the cases. Further conclusions indicate that this method may be useful for professional leaders or educators, but difficult for the average professional. Ultimately, this method was found to be a useful tool to the risk manager. |
