Healthcare

Athletic Trainers

Evaluate and treat musculoskeletal injuries or illnesses.

Sector: Healthcare
Preparation: Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed
O*NET code: 29-9091.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Assisting and Caring for Others

central to the job — rated 97/100 for importance.
Documenting/Recording Information

central to the job — rated 97/100 for importance.
Making Decisions and Solving Problems

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge

a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

a major part of the work — rated 79/100 for importance.
Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work

a major part of the work — rated 75/100 for importance.

Evaluate and treat musculoskeletal injuries or illnesses. Provide preventive, therapeutic, emergency, and rehabilitative care.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Critical Thinking

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Monitoring

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Judgment and Decision Making

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Medicine and Dentistry

Needed at a high level (64/100), and rated 91/100 for importance.
Customer and Personal Service

Needed at expert level (76/100), and rated 84/100 for importance.
Psychology

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 79/100 for importance.
Therapy and Counseling

Needed at a high level (65/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.

Abilities

Problem Sensitivity

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Written Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Speech Clarity

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

Graduate school — a master's, a PhD, an MD or a JD, depending on the field.

Experience

More than five years of related experience is common before the title is yours.

Training

This is a long runway. Start the prerequisites early or the timeline slips a year at a time.

What it pays

These are typical healthcare compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Athletic Trainers specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Mayo Clinic · Johns Hopkins

$130k – $300k

Regional Health Systems

$100k – $180k

Clinics & Private Practice

$80k – $130k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

The work is physical — you are on your feet and handling things, not sitting still.From “Performing General Physical Activities”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”
People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Athletic Trainers. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

More in Healthcare

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Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Athletic Trainers and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.