DO's and Sports Medicine

[runfast5k]

Do many DO's or MD's go into sports med? see i've heard there is fellowships in sports med after say a family practice, pediatrics, or internal med residency. I'd like to be a team doctor or have my own practice and work with alot of athletes. What do people think?

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[Doctor Peloncito]

Do many DO's or MD's go into sports med? see i've heard there is fellowships in sports med after say a family practice, pediatrics, or internal med residency. I'd like to be a team doctor or have my own practice and work with alot of athletes. What do people think?

Yes, there are many DO sports medicine docs. There are a few ways to do it. The way that you mentioned (usually FP+SM fellowship). Also, PM&R+Fellowship. Apolo Ono flew his DO to Salt Lake City after he fell in the olympics.

 

[OSUdoc08]

There is also an EM + 1 year sports med fellowship, which I plan to do

 

[PublicHealth]

http://www.jockdoctors.com/OurStaff.htm

 

[Doctortobee]

The team doc for the Cleveland Indians is a DO

 

[Doctor Peloncito]

A few pro team physicians that are do's:

http://www.ptponline.com/doctorpage.cfm?id=293

http://www.ptponline.com/doctorpage.cfm?id=213

http://www.ptponline.com/doctorpage.cfm?id=234

http://www.ptponline.com/doctorpage.cfm?id=230

http://www.ptponline.com/doctorpage.cfm?id=202

 

[Doctor Peloncito]

Apolo Ohno's Doc

 

[bgreet]

ACtually I was lucky enough to listen in on a lecture by the director of sports medicine, Scott Nadler a DO, at UMDNJ (allopathic institute). He is one of the physicians that attends the olympics as well as many college level and high school level sports teams. He goes to the olympic sports training center all the time and works directly with the athletes, and he also speaks of the many personal relationships he has developed with a lot of these athletes. Really cool and personable guy!

 

[Fin-Nor]

just out of curiosity, what would be an average pay for SM docs?

 

[Claymore]

I think there is a significant amount of variation between the practices and lifestyles of different types of sports medicine docs. From my understanding it is rare for a doc to practice solely sports med; rather, it is usually a component of their main specialty. So you really need to also like the main specialty as well as the sports component. I think each brings something else to the table:

EM+Sports Med: Focus on acute care of sports injuries
PM&R+Sports Med: Focus on long term care/restoration of function
Family/IM + Sports Med: injury prevention, exercise and diet prescription, treatment of concomitant medical illnesses (asthma, cardiac anomalies, etc), long term care, non-surgical tx
Ortho+ Sports Med: surgical intervention

 

[Doctor Peloncito]

just out of curiosity, what would be an average pay for SM docs?

For the nonsurgical folks, I would imagine it would be close to whatever a Primary Care Physician makes in your area. Team physicians may make a bit more. This is all speculation though.

 

[runfast5k]

ok thanks alot

 

[Buster Douglas]

Osteopathic Sports Medicine FAQ

 

[bigmuny]

For the nonsurgical folks, I would imagine it would be close to whatever a Primary Care Physician makes in your area. Team physicians may make a bit more. This is all speculation though.

Actually team docs(professional sports, maybe college too) make nothing from treating the athletes themselves or from the team. In some instances with major professional teams the practice providing the medical service for the team pays huge sums of money to the team for the honors of treating them. In return the docs get to advertise that they are team doc for such and such organization which as you would imagine brings in huge business to the practice. For the major sports teams it is usually a large well established practice that take care of them, and I would imagine does not pay that great for a new grad(low man on the totem pole in a big practice), but maybe you could say you scoped kobes knee which is nice to put on a resume. Here is one of our local sports med groups(read some of the docs cv's, whoa..):
http://www.kerlanjobe.com/

 

[drvlad2004]

I've heard ton of great things about Kerlan-Jobe. They have quite a prestigious fellowship. Bigmuny is correct about sports doc actually paying a team in order to work for them. However, once patients know that you work for a certain team, you'll have patients coming to you (athletes and non-athletes).

Bryant, I am not sure about how much SM docs earn since it depends upon what specialty you enter. Obviously, FP and IM will probably earn the least. Any type of injury that may be sports related (whether or not the person is an athlete) actually will be billed higher. Add OMM and injections (pain management and/or interventional spine) into your skills, then we are talking about earning an awesome salary!

Back to the OP's question, I can absolutely plan your practice exactly by how mentioned. I plan on becoming a team physician or work with tons of athletes after I finish my PM&R residency. I plan on doing a sports medicine fellowship or a sports & spine fellowship. I'd love to have an expertise with disabled athletes since my PM&R training will include learning about prosthetics and orthotics.