Sports Medicine Fellowship Experience

Welcome to the Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship Program at Nationwide Children's Hospital! The Sports Medicine Fellowship is a one year fellowship at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Fellows will have a broad range of study and a close working relationship with faculty members.

The fellow will see a broad spectrum of patients with sports and/or exercise related health problems in the Sports Medicine Clinics. Clinical experience will revolve around anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology of injuries and musculoskeletal disease, biomechanics, nutrition, injury prevention, pre-participation evaluation, management of acute and chronic illness of injury and rehabilitation, chronic disease management as it relates to exercise (i.e. congenital heart disease, coronary artery disease, DM, COPD, and Sudden Cardiac Death [SCD]), psychology in sports and exercise, pharmacology (including ergogenics and performance enhancing drugs) and medical conditions that affect sports and exercise (i.e. exercise induced asthma, concussion, anemia). This is accomplished through the treatment of a wide variety of age ranges from childhood through adulthood (including elderly patients).
 

Event Coverage

Sports Medicine provides an interesting dynamic in patient care. Athletes are motivated and energetic individuals. Their decision making process can often be clouded by outside influences in the form of parent, coach, and team expectations. These individuals can be difficult to hold back from athletic competition even though their medical condition warrants a period of rest for rehabilitation. The opportunity to counsel and treat patients who are athletes, in the setting of the athletic training room and on the sideline, is unique to sports medicine. In these settings, the sports medicine physician must be proficient in quickly assessing, diagnosing, and forming a treatment plan as it relates to return to play decisions. This process can be precarious in light of the pressures related to outside influences. Overall, the sports medicine physician's role is to help an athlete to get back on the field as quickly as possible while at the same time protecting the athlete from themselves and other outside influences. At times, this can be a difficult and lonely path. This experience will be garnered in the following ways:

• Ohio Dominican University Training Room and Sideline/Event Coverage:
  The fellow will provide comprehensive and continuing care to Division II collegiate athletes during weekly training room visits, football games, and other sports events under the supervision of the Nationwide Children's Sports Medicine faculty.
   
• High School Training Room and Event Coverage:
  The fellow will provide comprehensive and continuing care to a local high school in the Columbus area during weekly training room visits, football games and other sports events under the supervision of the Nationwide Children's Sports Medicine faculty.
   
• Mass Participation Events

  • Nationwide Childrens Hospital Columbus Marathon:
    The fellow will provide coverage during the marathon. The fellow will shadow Dr. Jonathon Napolitano MD (Medical Director for Spectator Tent at the finish line) during planning and preparation for race day. The fellow will help to cover both the spectator tent for part of the time as well as the finish line tent for participants part of the time.

  • Tour de Grandview:
    The Tour de Grandview Cycling Classic attracts an international field of several hundred professional cyclists to central Ohio each year, as well as cycling enthusiasts and spectators from throughout the Midwest. The Tour features world-class bicycle racing through the streets of suburban Grandview, as well as several events and activities for spectators and cyclists alike. The fellow will work alongside Dr. Thomas Pommering, DO (Medical Director) to help plan and prepare for the event as well as caring for racers on race day.

  • The Arnold Sports Festival:
    The Arnold consists of 22,000 athletes from 80 nations competing in 80+ events. The fellow will help provide medical coverage for these athletes. Medical Director, Bryan Ghiloni, MD (Mount Carmel Health System)

Conferences

Scholarly Activity/Research

Supporting and encouraging scholarly activities is necessary for a fellow's personal and professional development and program improvement. To foster the fellow's growth, understanding, and appreciation of evidence based medicine through scholarly activity, the fellow will learn skills necessary to read medical literature in an evidence based fashion, answer medical questions, and apply knowledge with a critical and rationale thought process when treating patients. This will be accomplished by learning to be effective at teaching, analyzing data, assimilating data, applying data, and if desired, entering into original research.

To ensure such an environment, the fellow can expect to engage in the following:

Monthly Case Conference

The fellow will present a case at monthly Case Conference pertaining to an interesting/difficult case revolving around patient care.  Case conference is utilized as an un-intimidating and friendly forum to discuss difficult patient cases.  The fellow will seek and incorporate feedback and self-assessment into a plan for professional growth and practice improvement.  The fellow will seek and incorporate feedback and assistance in patient care through the use of case conference to help answer questions concerning improved patient care by interacting in a collegial setting with peers.  The case should be prepared on PowerPoint. This will provide good practice in preparation for a case presentation at one of the national meetings at either American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) or The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) conference.

Journal Club

The fellow will present a journal article review, based on recent scientific literature/studies at the monthly sports medicine journal club.  The article chosen by the Fellow will be a traditional evidence based article.

Journal Club topics can maintain a theme (i.e. Spondylolysis or Concussion) or be separate. The Faculty will be present to help critically review and discuss the fellow’s article as well as present additional scientific literature/studies for discussion.

Radiology Conference

Radiology Conference is organized by Dr. Ravindran in cooperation with Dr. Adler (MSK radiologist) or a designee in the Radiology Department. Radiology conference is utilized to review normal anatomy as well as pathology based in a case format. The format of radiology conference will be as follows and based on a predefined body part or joint:
• First 10 Minutes: Radiology 101 with radiologist providing a brief instruction on the best way to view an MRI, CT, bone scan, or plain film for a particular finding. (I.e. Meniscal injury and MRI)
• Next 45 Minutes: Cases to be viewed based on joint or body part theme from radiology case log
• Last 5 Minutes: Potpourri of current and interesting cases brought by group.

Monthly Research Conference

The fellow will attend, with all Sports Medicine faculty, monthly research conference. This monthly conference is where the faculty are updated on ongoing research and Quality Improvement (QI) projects in the Division of Sports Medicine. This conference is particularly important at the beginning of the academic year as a format to get the fellow familiar with ongoing research that they may be interested in participating.

Scholarly Activity

The fellow is required to participate in a research project or scholarly activity. To ensure that protected time is given for reading, writing, preparing lectures and conducting research, one half day per week is dedicated. Additional time throughout the week is granted if necessary. During the one year of sports medicine fellowship training a formal research project is not required secondary to a year time constraint to obtain approval for such project from the IRB, initiate data collection, assimilate data, and publish data. The sports medicine faculty realizes the importance of clinical research. If a fellow wishes to participate in research they will have ample opportunity to do so with the sports medicine faculty.  If a fellow wishes to do an individual project; the sports medicine faculty will help guide and direct the fellow to accomplish the said project in a timely manner so as the project is realistic with regards to time constraints.  To meet the requirement of scholarly activity the following activities have been incorporated:

Presentation at National Meeting
The fellow is required to submit a case presentation/poster or research project at either the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) or The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) national meetings.  The case can be obtained from any of the daily clinics or training rooms the fellow participates.  The case should be original and theoretically uncommon or complicated.  The objective is to research the said case in an evidence based fashion and apply decisions concerning diagnostics and treatment in an analytical fashion while demonstrating gathering, synthesis, and accuracy of information to make decisions about patient management.

Publication
The fellow is required to submit for publication either a quality journal review article, case study, or text book chapter pertaining to a musculoskeletal/sports medicine topic.  If the fellow has entered into original research, manuscript submission would fulfill this requirement.

Quality Improvement Project
The fellow works with the Sports Medicine QI Director, Dr. Amy Valasek, and a faculty mentor to help complete a quality improvement project within the Sports Medicine Division. This project is utilized to improve a systems and/or practice based aspect of sports medicine patient care. The project is presented to all sports faculty before the end of the fellowship year. This project can also be submitted for publication which would satisfy the scholarly activity requirement in place of a review article or case study manuscript submission.