Sport Medicine specialty - what is it exactly?

[PTtodoc]

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[JP2740]

My friend and I are planning on opening a sports medicine practice. We're planning on turning into a b-dubs/hooters dojo. Flatscreens everywhere with sports news/games and the latest cutting edge treatment for sports injuries.

 

[Law2Doc]

Hello!

I am an MD hopeful (please don't burn me for posting this in the Allo thread, but current MDs/students are probably better able to answer my questions!!)

Currently I work as a full-time physical therapist. I enjoy PT but I have a long list of reasons for wanting to go back and do the MD route.

However, I would like to specialize in a field of medicine which still allows me to use hands on skills and spend time with my client. I've considered family med/emergency/and sport med.

I just need to clarify what sport medicine is exactly. I've never worked with a SportMed Doc. Through working as a PT, I know that most clients will come in to see us directly from the street or will go to a family doc who will suggest PT. Then we can refer to an orthopaedic surgeon if we feel the client needs surgery or injection etc. I've never had a patient come referred from a sport med doc, nor have we ever referred on to one.

What do they do exactly?
What kind of caseload would they see? and what is the typical day like? Is it all just patients coming for join injections? Are there any hands on skills you can use?

This question has been addressed in preallo in the past, and as a Premed hopeful your question probably still belongs there. Sports medicine is a subspecialty of family med. It's a supersaturated subspecialty because lots of people want to do it, and in general you lose a ton of potential patients to ortho ( who can do any needed interventions) and PM&R ( who can supervise any needed therapy).

 

[Smurfette]

(moving to pre-allo as OP is pre med).

 

[Josh7]

My friend and I are planning on opening a sports medicine practice. We're planning on turning into a b-dubs/hooters dojo. Flatscreens everywhere with sports news/games and the latest cutting edge treatment for sports injuries.

How would this work with HIPPA and all of that?

 

[civic4982]

Two good places to start:

http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/policy/policies/s/sportsmed3.html

http://www.sportsmed.org/

 

[lowbudget]

What do they do exactly?
What kind of caseload would they see? and what is the typical day like? Is it all just patients coming for join injections? Are there any hands on skills you can use?

Sports medicine physicians are doctors for people with athletic issues. The issues may be encountered during exercise or they may be issues that the patient hope to prevent during exercise.

There are 2 types of sports medicine physicians. Sports med ortho operate, primary care sports med do not operate. Primary care sports medicine can include doctors whose primary specialty is in family med, internal med, peds, emergency med, or PM&R. There are a lot of overlap.

Typical day and caseload depends on your training, your practice setting, and how much of your primary specialty you maintain in your practice. Sports medicine is largely an ambulatory specialty, even the surgical cases; so most physicians will work in a clinic environment, whether it is an appointment-based setting or walk-in type setting.

Bulk of the job of the sports med physician is to figure out what is going on (making the diagnosis) for patients who seek your care. From there, the treatment makes a logical progression. So what that means is you take a history, do the exam, consider any further diagnostic modalities, make an assessment and plan out and execute treatment.

Most of the stuff you'll see presents as pain in a certain body part and you have to figure out why and what to do about it. It may be something as obvious as a broken bone or dislocated joint, to something more subtle like a nerve entrapment or cartilage/ligament/tendon/muscle injury. You may also see non-MSK issues related to exercise, such as chest pain, shortness of breath, fluid/electrolyte abnormality, or injury to the non-extremities (like eye/facial injury or concussion/brain injury). You may also see cases where patients are generally well, and would like to stay that way. So your job is to screen for problems (like cardiac) and identify potential problems (risk of dislocation after ligament injury) and modify people's activity because of that. You may also be asked to manage problems that arise with people with multi-factoral issues, who engage in exercise (such as insulin management in type 1 diabetic endurance runners, medication control of asthmatics, hydration management during exercise in patients with sickle cell disease/trait, exercise recommendation for post-MI patients, fluid/nutrition management in a post-gastric bypass patient running a marathon). You may also have a public health role in that you may manage a population of athletes. Examples would be serving as a college or high school team physician and coming up with a protocol on how to manage concussions. Or, serving as the medical director of a triathlon and be involved in planning the medical care during the event and figuring out ways to limit/prevent the number of medical casualties.

Hands on skills will include your physical exam diagnostic skills (MSK, but also HEENT, cardiac/pulm, abdominal, and GU), but also your own interpretation of imaging with MSK ultrasound being the most hands-on imaging technique. Joint injection is one part of your practice but so is management of fractures such as splinting/casting or reduction of fractures/dislocations. You may suture, provide IV fluids, or remove foreign objects when you are sideline. If you desire more hands-on than that, you can consider going the surgical route.

 

[harnabra01]

Sports medicine physicians are doctors for people with athletic issues. The issues may be encountered during exercise or they may be issues that the patient hope to prevent during exercise.

There are 2 types of sports medicine physicians. Sports med ortho operate, primary care sports med do not operate. Primary care sports medicine can include doctors whose primary specialty is in family med, internal med, peds, emergency med, or PM&R. There are a lot of overlap.

Typical day and caseload depends on your training, your practice setting, and how much of your primary specialty you maintain in your practice. Sports medicine is largely an ambulatory specialty, even the surgical cases; so most physicians will work in a clinic environment, whether it is an appointment-based setting or walk-in type setting.

Bulk of the job of the sports med physician is to figure out what is going on (making the diagnosis) for patients who seek your care. From there, the treatment makes a logical progression. So what that means is you take a history, do the exam, consider any further diagnostic modalities, make an assessment and plan out and execute treatment.

Most of the stuff you'll see presents as pain in a certain body part and you have to figure out why and what to do about it. It may be something as obvious as a broken bone or dislocated joint, to something more subtle like a nerve entrapment or cartilage/ligament/tendon/muscle injury. You may also see non-MSK issues related to exercise, such as chest pain, shortness of breath, fluid/electrolyte abnormality, or injury to the non-extremities (like eye/facial injury or concussion/brain injury). You may also see cases where patients are generally well, and would like to stay that way. So your job is to screen for problems (like cardiac) and identify potential problems (risk of dislocation after ligament injury) and modify people's activity because of that. You may also be asked to manage problems that arise with people with multi-factoral issues, who engage in exercise (such as insulin management in type 1 diabetic endurance runners, medication control of asthmatics, hydration management during exercise in patients with sickle cell disease/trait, exercise recommendation for post-MI patients, fluid/nutrition management in a post-gastric bypass patient running a marathon). You may also have a public health role in that you may manage a population of athletes. Examples would be serving as a college or high school team physician and coming up with a protocol on how to manage concussions. Or, serving as the medical director of a triathlon and be involved in planning the medical care during the event and figuring out ways to limit/prevent the number of medical casualties.

Hands on skills will include your physical exam diagnostic skills (MSK, but also HEENT, cardiac/pulm, abdominal, and GU), but also your own interpretation of imaging with MSK ultrasound being the most hands-on imaging technique. Joint injection is one part of your practice but so is management of fractures such as splinting/casting or reduction of fractures/dislocations. You may suture, provide IV fluids, or remove foreign objects when you are sideline. If you desire more hands-on than that, you can consider going the surgical route.

wow, thanks for taking the time to write this up.