So I have been interested in the two fields ever since I started playing sports. Well, more specifically when I tore my ACL and basically everything in my shoulder. I love looking at the MRIs trying to figure out what is wrong and reading up on different cases. The only thing that deters me is that I am really not into surgery. I could watch it no problem, but performing any surgeries would be a no go for me. Is sports medicine basically orthopedics without surgery? Is there a field that is all orthopedics without any sort of surgery?
Sports medicine vs Orthopedic Surgeon
- Thread starter bbruins99
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look into PM&R as well
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the PM&R comment is a great one. very interesting field with a lot of the work concentrated in non-op spine treatments. not a clairvoyant, but i don't think its unreasonable to imagine that field becoming more popular as more equivocal outcomes with spine procedures vs. non-op treatment roll out.
if you're not interested in performing surgery at all, you could certainly do the primary care sports med route. lots of ultrasound work, biologics, injections -- that type of thing. i believe most fellowships will accept EM, IM, family med, and peds residency prior to the fellowship. don't quote me on it, though.
if you're not interested in performing surgery at all, you could certainly do the primary care sports med route. lots of ultrasound work, biologics, injections -- that type of thing. i believe most fellowships will accept EM, IM, family med, and peds residency prior to the fellowship. don't quote me on it, though.
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Musculoskeletal Radiologist
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@Swan Ronson You are correct. @bbruins99 Here's some info from the AMSSM. You do any primary care residency (this includes PMR as well) then do a fellowship in sports med.
https://www.amssm.org/Content/pdf files/Students-CareerforYou-Broch.pdf
https://www.amssm.org/Content/pdf files/Students-CareerforYou-Broch.pdf
Agreed with everyone that PM&R sounds like the perfect choice. You essentially do orthopedics without ever going to the OR. You do learn other things in PM&R residency like how to take care of patients after a stroke, but you could definitely focus on musculoskeletal injuries in your practice. If you're not into the OR but do like procedures, you're able to do a fellowship in interventional pain after PM&R, which trains you in image guided joint injections and nerve ablations, often-times for sports injuries. The way things are going now, interventional pain docs may be the ones putting in percutaneous spine spacers, which preliminary studies show to be non-inferior in terms of quality of life compared to open surgery for patients with spinal stenosis. Overall, sounds like a great field!
One statement I would disagree with is primary care sports med trained doctors doing biologics. That's the domain of rheumatology.
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Check out episode 13 of the podcast Specialty Stories about PM&R.
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A
AnatomyGrey12
Sports med is pretty cool if you are into non-surgical orthopedics. I just saw mine the other day for an old sports injury and we ended up chatting for a lot of the appointment about his day to day, types of cases, types of patients, etc. It out the field on my long list of fields to check out.
