Athletic training

I was under the assumption that one needed a degree in order to be certified. See the National Athletic Trainers' Association: Get Certified |

If you want to be a certified athletic trainer, you have to go through the entire process. That involves getting a bachelors degree in sports medicine or at least a bachelors degree that covers all of the educational requirements to become an athletic trainer. That also means that you must do an internship that is at least 800 hours. You cannot get to athletic trainer certified (ATC) by just being an RN and going through some additional training. There is no bridge program that will take you there. Follow the link to the NATA website, above, and you will see the educational requirements to become a certified athletic trainer. The NATA-BOC is the ONLY certifying body for athletic trainers. You must meet their educational requirements or you can not be certified (or licensed) as an ATC.

I would recommend going through a program that is accredited as their programs are tightly integrated in their didactic and clinical experiences so that you only need 800 internship hours. It's very much possible to accumulate over 1500 hours during your internship. My own educational background is in Sports Medicine, and I worked for 2 years as an assistant athletic trainer at a Div. III program before changing careers, which ultimately resulted in me going to Nursing School.

I am not sure if this will help, but you can receive Certification through NSCA as a personal trainer, and a certified strength and conditioning specialist with a bachelors degree of any kind if I'm not mistaken. You would have to study and take the exams. I'm not sure what your goals are, but many well respected individuals in the field have the CSCS.

According to the Athletic Trainer web site, if you have a Bachelor's than you could take an entry-level masters program in athletic training to qualify. It looks like it would be quite an investment, but it could be cool.

Be aware that personal trainers and Strength and Conditioning Coach certifications are less rigorous than ATC. They also don't get you any credibility in Sports Medicine that I've ever seen because that stuff is a small part of what ATC's do.

Here's a link to a PDF file that outlines what an ATC does: http://www.nata.org/sites/default/files/GuideToAthleticTrainingServices.pdf

Here's a quick PDF outlining the difference: http://www.nata.org/sites/default/files/AT-Not-Trainer.pdf

This really does outline the steps one must take to become an athletic trainer: Get Certified as an Athletic Trainer

Your prerequisites for nursing will probably work as prerequisites for entry to an approved program, but there's no bridge from nursing to athletic training. They don't follow the nursing model, it's more medical model, so that would be a mental shift for you, if you're used to the nursing model of caring for injured patients.