Self Regional Healthcare Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship aims to train our fellows in a broad spectrum of sports and activity related medical skills and knowledge sets. Our associated residency has a mandate to prepare physicians for the rural and small-town setting, and the fellowship acknowledges the need to prepare primary care sports medicine physicians with the appropriate skills to use in all settings extending from the Friday night fall football game to the scuba diver returning from travel with latent decompression sickness. Our faculty coverage is broad and offers an abundance of expertise. The program is accredited by the ACGME and all graduates have passed the ABFM CAQ exam on their first attempt.
The Program Director is fellowship trained and has been board certified and practicing sports medicine for nearly 15 years. He has been teaching for 10 years, after spending four years in private practice, and is also a fulltime attending for the Family Medicine residency. Our Associate Director has returned after four years of practice in Family and Sports Medicine to fulltime teaching. The founder of our fellowship has been certified in Sports Medicine since certification started in 1993 and continues to be intimately involved in our fellowship, both clinically and with the education of fellows and residents. All three of our faculty have had extensive private practice experience and significant research accomplishments as well. One of the primary faculty will be present in the sports medicine clinic every day and at most, but not all, training room settings. At least one faculty member will be available by phone at all times.
Our Sports Medicine Experience
In addition to our faculty, the fellowship has educators from Orthopedic Surgery, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Clinical Imaging, Exercise Physiology/Sports Nutrition, Physical Therapy, Cardiology, Coaching/Athletic Training, Family Medicine, Dive Medicine, and Neuropsychology. Their responsibilities include but are not limited to the following: consultation, clinical instruction of the fellows, supervision of procedures, research, and didactic teaching.
The educational impact the fellowship offers will be executed in a variety of sports medicine care settings.
The setting for the fellowship training will primarily be in an ambulatory care Sports Medicine Center. This clinic currently sees approximately 12-18 patients in the half day and runs 10 half days per week, with each fellow being assigned about 70% of that time. In addition, training room and sideline coverage comprises 15% of the fellows’ time, and the remaining 15% will be spent in the following settings: mass participation events sports care, ambulatory primary specialty clinic, research, preparation for and attendance of didactic conferences, sports psychology, exercise is medicine, and dive medicine training.
Our fellowship currently has many locations providing institutional support. These locations include Self Regional Healthcare, Optimum Life Center, The Sports Medicine Center at Self Regional Healthcare, Montgomery Center for Family Medicine, Lander University Athletics Training Room, Orthopaedic Associates of the Lakelands, and Erskine College Training Room. Additional sites of coverage include many area high schools. We value the community involvement that is truly an ingrained part of Sports Medicine.
High schools covered:
McCormick High School
Calhoun Falls High School
Dixie High school
Greenwood Christian School
Ware Shoals High School
Ninety-Six High School
Greenwood High School
Emerald High School
Palmetto Christian Academy of Greenwood
At these locations the fellow will be responsible for clinical decisions which will include but not be limited to injections, splinting and casting, laceration repair, taping and strapping, making of orthotics, physical therapy, x-rays, athletic injuries, chronic pain and musculoskeletal ultrasound.
Additional and unique experiences of the fellowship are:
- International medicine experience in Peru with >100 injections and minor surgeries in one week, led by Dr. Dave Sealy
- Scuba experience and dive medicine teaching
- Triathlon coverage
- Erskine College football coverage
- Bustling weekly procedural clinic
- Video gait analysis and training
- Invasive compartment testing
- Cardiovascular stress testing
- Training in minimally invasive tenotomy (TenJet)
There are moonlighting opportunities in Urgent Care and the Edgefield County Healthcare Emergency Room.
