Sports & Pain Fellowships: Doing Both?

[JBM16BYU]

Hi! I'm a PGY1 in a Prelim-IM year, heading to my PM&R Advanced program this coming summer 2020. I've read through all of the old threads that discuss pain vs. sports vs. sports/spine vs. interventional spine fellowships. Ultimately, from what I gather, the majority of opinions are that if you're going to do a fellowship, most likely do something that will give you the board certification at the end because it will open the most doors and keep you pretty safe, legally. Interventional Spine and Sports/Spine fellowships are not accredited by the ACGME, so neither can give you that board certification at the end. That being said, if someone is truly interested in both sports & pain, and can no longer participate in the whole grandfathering thing where they can take the board exams without doing the fellowship, is it feasible to do fellowships in both sports medicine and pain? Has anyone heard of anybody ever doing this before?

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[j4pac]

Hi! I'm a PGY1 in a Prelim-IM year, heading to my PM&R Advanced program this coming summer 2020. I've read through all of the old threads that discuss pain vs. sports vs. sports/spine vs. interventional spine fellowships. Ultimately, from what I gather, the majority of opinions are that if you're going to do a fellowship, most likely do something that will give you the board certification at the end because it will open the most doors and keep you pretty safe, legally. Interventional Spine and Sports/Spine fellowships are not accredited by the ACGME, so neither can give you that board certification at the end. That being said, if someone is truly interested in both sports & pain, and can no longer participate in the whole grandfathering thing where they can take the board exams without doing the fellowship, is it feasible to do fellowships in both sports medicine and pain? Has anyone heard of anybody ever doing this before?

I’d honestly go to a program strong at MSK, such as Mayo...then I’d do a pain fellowship. You’d leave with a phenomenal ultrasound and EMG experience, then you’d have the Pain board certification to keep yourself safe. I wouldn’t do Sports and Pain...that’s about a loss of $150,000 in potential earning. If you want to work in either an academic center or be a “team doc” to Division 1 or professional sports...then do a Sports fellowship. Otherwise, I don’t think that it’s necessary to do Sports coming from a place like Mayo. In reality...I believe that our residency training may be better than many Sports Fellowships out there.

 

[timisdaman]

It really depends what you want to do in life; ie: what patients do you want to see, and what procedures do you want to do?

Different residency programs have different strengths. Some may give you excellent ultrasound training, as j4pac suggested, and other may give you excellent fluoro training. Some may give both, and most will give neither.

Similarly, fellowships are different. Some Pain fellowships give ultrasound training, some do not. Some Sports fellowships give fluoro training, some do not.

Keep in mind that you will be forever learning. There will be new procedures and new techniques, and you just need the foundation from your prior training in order to incorporate them.

Basically, yes it is feasible, but most likely not worth it.

 

[Baron Samedi]

I am Pain trained, therefor, biased.

There is no procedure the Sports-trained guys can do that I am not credentialed to do. I see plenty of Sports patients in my Pain Clinic. If I wanted to expand my MSK and US skills, I can just attend a couple conferences and workshops. There are plenty of treatments that I can offer that the Sports guys are not credentialed to do. For them to gain those competencies, they would have to go back and do another fellowship.

 

[PMR2008]

Agree with the above. I am pain trained and gained most sports knowledge along the way with experience and courses. I saw no reason to do a sports fellowship unless I wanted to be academic sports.

 

[PaprikaLeapt]

I had a related question- if you thought you might want to do PM&R and then maybe later go into sports medicine, how would you prioritize your activities during the four years of medical school itself?
Ex: would you focus 100% on PM&R related things first?

 

[PMR2008]

At least for me I started to shadow PM&R sports docs as a 3rd year medical student. I look any chance I would get to volunteer at sports events including marathon medical coverage. I spent my elective month as a 4th year with a PM&R sports doc and got a LOR from him. These connections helped even when I was applying for pain fellowship.