Sports Medicine/Orthopedics

[dalmedical12]

I'm just entering my first year of medical school in September but I have a lot of interest in Orthopedics...and possibly more specific, working with Athletes in Sports Medicine. Now, i know one Doc who got a Diploma in Sports Medicine after she specialized as an Orthopedic Surgeon. Does anyone know much about Sports Medcine? Any Tips? Any Schools in the Canada or US that offer such sub-specialty training?

 

Thanks!

[ploughboy]

I'm just entering my first year of medical school in September but I have a lot of interest in Orthopedics...and possibly more specific, working with Athletes in Sports Medicine. Now, i know one Doc who got a Diploma in Sports Medicine after she specialized as an Orthopedic Surgeon. Does anyone know much about Sports Medcine? Any Tips? Any Schools in the Canada or US that offer such sub-specialty training?

 

Thanks!

 

Hey,

 

You can do sports med via ortho, or as a PGY-3 after family medicine. I imagine you could also do it after a PM&R residency. Of course, only the orthos get to do the fun surgeries.

 

If you haven't already, you might want to check out: http://www.casm-acms.org/

 

There are lots of links from there. I see you're at Dal, but I'll put in a plug here for the programme in London. It's pretty highly regarded...

 

http://www.fowlerkennedy.com/

 

pb

[coastalslacker]

Most orthopods see "sports medicine" in general practice. Increasingly the trend is to get sub-specialty training by doing a 1-2 year fellowship after your residency. Most Canadian schools offer sports medicine fellowships as do tonnes of places in the States and around the world. Some people go to Australia or Europe for fellowships. This gives you a bit more street cred and increases your chances of getting a job. That said, the team doc for the Senators is an Orthopod with a Spine fellowship.

 

Many physical medicine and rehab docs also do sports medicine as do family doctors who can do a PGY-3 year at places like the Fowler clinic in London. Not a tonne of PGY-3 spots open for family meds is my understanding. A classmate of mine is very interested in sports and being a team doctor and has gone into a 5 year ER residency. He was told that increasingly one will need a five year residency program to realistically have a shot at being a team doc (he wants to work with the Olympic team down the road). In the past there were lots of family doctors without any extra training as team doctors-this is unlikely to continue.

 

Bottomline, if you're really into sports your best bets are Physical medicine/rehab or Ortho. Try to get some exposure to these areas in your first couple years and figure out which you like. PM&R has a great lifestyle, but in my very biased opinion it is ridiculously slow and boring. Ortho has long hours but, again in my very biased opinion, nothing beats operating and actually fixing stuff. At the end of the day, PM&R patient encounters often end up saying: "refer to ortho for possible surgical managment".

[dalmedical12]

Thank you both very much for the information! It is very useful because I have heard of so many paths in the pursuit of Sports Medicine as a career.

 

To actually hear that there are other people out there who'd like to end up with a Pro Sports team is pretty cool. I haven't heard that from anyone else.

 

It's would be interesting to know how Docs end up in the Sports World? How challenging it is to get there?

 

It just sort of seems that you need to make or have a lot of connections...haha

 

Thanks for the help though!

[ploughboy]

Not a tonne of PGY-3 spots open for family meds is my understanding.

 

That's my understanding too, though from reading the CASM website it sounds like any old family doc with 50 hours of relevant practice and $1200 to burn can sit for the Dip. Sport Med. exam.

 

A formal PGY-3 year would probably give you "street cred", extra training and the opportunity to make connections. A 5-year residency +/- fellowship would give you even more of all of that.

 

I have a gut feeling that being team doc for a national/Olympic/professional team depends a lot on who you know in addition to your professional qualifications. Anything that gives you exposure and gets your name/face out there is probably a good thing.

 

Random factiod: on the whole, I've found that rheumatologists are absolute masters of the MSSK exam and they don't have a horde of orthopod-keeners hanging around their clinics all the time. A good thing to do during your first year would be to spend a couple of days in rheum clinic overlearning the fundamentals of shoulder/hip/back/knee exam. Just a thought...pb

[skvangs]

I never knew you could do a fellowship in sports after fp? is this true?

[justletmein]

I never knew you could do a fellowship in sports after fp? is this true?

 

you can do a sports med fellowship after nearly any residency... I have seen sport med fellows from FM, anesthesia, EM, etc.....

 

the bottom line is, though, that the only ones who truly intervene are the orthopods who do sports med. The family docs with dip sports med will just be the go-between ... so they will do assessments on the field and then, if necessary, refer them to the orthopedic. ---- But, as you will find in most professional sports where the teams can afford it, they will pay the orthopod to sit there at the games so as to avoid the middleman.