Sports Medicine Fellowship

The Sports Medicine Fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital is a fully accredited one-year ACGME program. It is designed to be flexible enough to meet the needs of the individual fellow while fulfilling the basic education requirements of the program. Its mission is to provide a superior quality learning experience in the field of primary care sports medicine. The program provides multiple learning environments and offers a strong curriculum in evaluation and treatment of the injured athlete, decision-making while covering athletic events, community health promotion/disease prevention, exercise prescription and teaching/research. The Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship Program’s goals have been created such that the training program will prepare a fellow who has graduated a primary care residency program (pediatrics, internal medicine, med/peds, family medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation or emergency medicine) to become a sub specialist who will have the appropriate knowledge and experience in clinical, teaching, research and/or other scholarly activities to have a successful career in academic or private practice sports medicine and to satisfy the requirements for certification in the Certificate of Added Qualifications in Primary Care Sports Medicine. The fellow should be an individual who is highly motivated to further elevate the skills learned in their primary specialty to meet the following aims of the Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship expecting the fellow to:

• Acquire clinical skills required to diagnose, manage, treat and prevent acute and chronic musculoskeletal problems that occur as a result of injury or overuse phenomenon while maintaining a primary care perspective.
• To gain skills necessary to plan, administer, and supervise a comprehensive “wellness” program to include; but not limited to aerobic fitness, risk factor reduction, proper nutrition, and health care services for the prevention of chronic disease from childhood to adulthood.
• Acquire an understanding of the epidemiology of musculoskeletal medicine conditions, pathogenesis, and biostatistical methods required to thoroughly understand evidence-based literature and if desired participate in clinical research.
• Although the fellowship is administered through a pediatric institution, the fellow will be comfortable practicing all facets of musculoskeletal medicine in relation to all age ranges from childhood to adulthood across a spectrum of patient populations from the disabled athlete to the elite athlete with a multitude of cultural and socio-economic differences.

Overall, each fellow will finish the fellowship program with the knowledge and expertise to be highly effective clinicians who can improve the lives of patients with musculoskeletal ailments as well as being able to guide these patients in strategies to live healthier lives and avoid injury. The activities will reflect a mix of patient care, educational experience and research, which will benefit the fellow upon completion of the program. This will include, but not be limited to, activities in Nationwide Children's Sports Medicine, Pediatric Orthopedics, Specialized Orthopedics, Adult Sports Medicine clinics, Nationwide Children's sub-specialty clinics, Primary Care clinics and side-line coverage at the high school and college levels.

In addition, a common trend in primary care sports medicine fellowship training is a lack of comfort with fracture care. Great emphasis has been placed on fracture care in the curriculum and clinical training at Nationwide Children’s. The fellow will emerge from training with confidence in radiographic evaluation of fractures, reduction techniques in fracture care, casting/splinting, and overall management of fractures. This will be accomplished by rotating with our orthopedic specialists and doing shifts in the Emergency Department with the moonlighting Orthopedic resident learning how to hone these skills.

Overall, each fellow will finish our program with the knowledge and expertise to be highly effective clinicians who can improve the lives of patients with musculoskeletal ailments as well as being able to guide these patients in strategies to live healthier lives and avoid injury.