> Can someone elaborate on the difference b/w a PASSOR Sports vs. Primary Care Fellowship? I tried going to the AAPMR.ORG site but it appears to be down.
Disclaimer: I am a senior PM+R resident about to start a PASSOR fellowship, coming from a residency program that has 2 seperate PASSOR fellowships.
PASSOR is the Physiatric Association of Spine, Sports, and Occupational Rehabilitation. They were originally created at a time when most of PM&R was focused on rehabilitation to give representation to musculoskeletal doctors. Some of the docs prominent in PASSOR started taking on apprentices to train them in the basic of physiatric musculoskeletal practice, and these apprenticeships have evolved into the current PASSOR fellowships.
Today, PASSOR has a set of guidelines to be classified as a PASSOR fellowship, including things like a minimum number of journal clubs, and certain percentages of spine and sports coverage within their practice. The goal was to create some uniformity as to what was meant by a PASSOR fellowship.
My impression, primarilly for the interview process, is that these criteria are largely in name only, and that the fellowships pretty much do whatever they want to do. That is not neccessarily a bad thing, but just means that you should realize their is a great deal of heterogeneity amongst the PASSOR fellowships.
In my opinion, when you match at a PASSOR fellowship, what you are really doing is matching with a mentor, and learning from their skills set. So if you do a fellowship with Michael Fuhrman at York, PA, you will be doing a fellowship focused on cutting edge interventional spine procedures, whereas if you do a fellowship with Heidi Prather at Wash U in St. Louis, you'll get a mix of lumbar interventional procedures, EMG, musculoskeletal ultrasound, and sports biomechanics as part of the mix. and if you work with Jay Smith and Karen Newcomer at Mayo, you get more emphasis on pure sports and musculoskeletal ultrasound. The biggest variability is primarily in how many spinal procedures you get exposed to, and it how much true sports (as opposed to general musculoskeletal) exposure you have.
The family med fellowships often have ACGME accreditation. As PM+R residents, you currently cannot sit for the board, so from an accreditation standpoint, that is meaningless for the residents in PM+R. What it does mean, though, is that you get more homogeneity. They tend to have more of a pure sports focus, but with far less emphasis on physiatric skill sets (EMG, interventional spine).
If you are considering sports medicine, I have two pieces of advise:
1. Do some soul searching to determine which aspects of sports medicine are important to you, because that will help you choose whether to go the PASSOR or family medicine route
2. Try to get to the ACSM meeting. The American College of Sports Medicine is, by far, the best meeting I've been too, and exposes you to the full spectrum of sports medicine. It can help you determine which aspects of sports medicine are the most interesting for you. I met my future fellowship mentor there, for example.
Hope that helps