sports medicine

[medicineman1]

So I sat through a very inspiring sports medicine lecture the other day from a faculty member- faculty member through the orthopedic department. She is family practice trained. Did a fellowship at the institution where we are at. I was suprised to find out that our PM&R department wasnt interested in funding our residents who rotate through our one month of sports med as residents, and that the ortho program/fellowship was doing it because? To me I found this to be quite amazing! As Pm&R docs, shouldn't we have elitist representation in the field of sports med? Why has it taken us 80 years to think about starting a few fellowships? I dont get it. I guess I was way off on the philosophical undercurrent in this field. We should be running the field, as well as pain management in my opinion, or atleast on equal footing as anesthesia- the lack of our mentors' foresight and /or leadership is interesting. Although, on the other hand, I guess the field was founded to help the post war efforts etc. But common, we should be running both of these subspecialty areas- in my opinion!

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[Disciple]

So I sat through a very inspiring sports medicine lecture the other day from a faculty member- faculty member through the orthopedic department. She is family practice trained. Did a fellowship at the institution where we are at. I was suprised to find out that our PM&R department wasnt interested in funding our residents who rotate through our one month of sports med as residents, and that the ortho program/fellowship was doing it because?

Probably because your department would rather have you on the unit making money for the department.

Honestly, I think most residents have a moment of clarity like yours sometime during their residency, and you're right, we do have the tools to be front and center in sports med and pain management.

The fact of the matter is that things change with the times, just like other fields of medicine. Physiatry actually started out "Physical Medicine" based (prior to WWII) before the "R" was added and the focus changed to rehabilitation. In the mid 1980's, Physiatrists were pulling down $500K/year running inpt units. When that got cut, there was probably a 5-10 year dead period or so before PASSOR came into existance. Now, as in other fields of medicine, lifestyle and expected income have become important factors (not that they weren't before), and you see where we have progressed to today.

Things are changing (we now have subspecialty cert for sports med and maybe soon Interventional Spine), but slowly. Policy and attitudes take a long time to change, especially in academia.

 

[PMR 4 MSK]

Old programs don't like to change, and many are cash-strapped. Mine used to prostitute us out to nursing homes in return for 1/2 of a position funding.

As the younger physiatrists come up through the ranks, these things will change. Some areas of the country are leading the charge, others are sitting back saying that's not what we do.