sports medicine

[stressedoutstud]

what are the steps to get to be a sports med doc? I know four years med school, then what residency? Also where are some common places that a sprorts doc would work?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Blade28]

Take a look at some of the related threads at the bottom of the page.

 

[-Goose-]

what are the steps to get to be a sports med doc? I know four years med school, then what residency? Also where are some common places that a sprorts doc would work?

Depends on whether or not you want to operate. Generally, there are 2 paths


1) Orthopedic surgery residency (5-6 yrs) + (operative) Sports Medicine fellowship (1 year)


2) Sports Medicine fellowship (non-operative; 1 year) following: 1) Emergency Medicine 2) Internal Medicine 3) Family Practice or 4) Pediatrics residency (all 3 - 4 years)

 

[deuist]

While there are several paths to becoming a sports medicine doc, certainly the orthopedic surgeons seem to have a strangle hold on the market. The reason is due to the ability to perform operations on commonly injured joints and bones, whereas other physicians are going to end up referring these cases anyway. Take for example emergency medicine. There are only three fellowship programs in the country that admit emergency physicians. Your best bet is to go into orthopedic surgery and then pursue sports medicine from there.

To answer your other questions: many sports medicine docs have private practices that serve as full-time jobs and then do sports medicine on the side. It for example you might work with a college or professional team only on game day and then see the players in your office during normal working hours. In some cases, you might not even be paid for the work that you do. Some of the sports medicine docs provide their services for free so that they can generate a name for their practice.

 

[cofcemt]

the orthopedic surgeons seem to have a strangle hold on the market.

I'm going to have to disagree here, having worked with our team physicians at my undergrad institution for the last 3 years. We have an ortho doc and a FM/SM doc. I think we actually use them about equally due to many of the general medical complaints that come with sports (derm, ob/gyn, eating disorders, ...) that orthos almost never deal with.

Also, if you look at the make up of most colleges and pro team physician groups, it usually consists of both orthos and sports med docs (many with specialists like derm). Most of the gen med physicians that i have met were old school family med physicians that pioneered the idea of sports medicine and no such fellowships existed at the time that they finished residency.

Now if you are talking about money, yeah, I totally agree. The orthos take full advantage of getting their name/clinic name out there to the public as more surgeries really rack up the money. Our ortho has to make 1M+ where i'm guessing that our FM/SM doc makes ~300-500K. Both nice salaries.

Just my 2 cents having worked in the field for a couple of years.

 

[-Goose-]

Our ortho has to make 1M+ where i'm guessing that our FM/SM doc makes ~300-500K.

I'm calling BS.

 

[MSKalltheway]

I also think its noteworthy that since Sports Med is a fellowship, how you practice it will be affected by your base residency. Ortho will allow you to operate, EM will have more of an emergency management focus, FM will incorporate primary care, PM&R (an often forgotten pathway) will have a rehabilitation slant, IM will be focused more to primary care as well, but only for adults, while Peds will only allow you to work with children.

You will make the most money in ortho because surgeries just reimburse more, but the ability to do joint injections in the other specialties are also lucrative (the extent of training for injections may vary with residency training though). Depending on the market and competition, I dont think the numbers described above are at all unrealistic.

I also do not agree that ortho is the best way to sports med. If you want to do sports but hate the OR, ortho will make you miserable. If you want to do sports med, pick your favorite of the specialties that I mentioned above--its rare that a physician makes most of their check from exclusively sports medicine. Its better just to do what you love and tack on the sports fellowship later.

Sports docs often try to work for teams at all levels, but they also have patients walk into the clinics they run in their own practice. I have even shadowed docs that have worked marathons and even the olympics. Sports med is beautiful because you dont have to work with only athletes, you can deal with all kinds of musculoskeletal problems in any patient population (probably the most common complaint to the PCP, and what we are the worst trained in).