Self Regional Healthcare Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship aims to give attending physicians a broad spectrum of sports and activity related medical skills and knowledge sets. As it is the mandate of the associated residency to prepare physicians for the rural and small town setting, the fellowship acknowledges the need to prepare primary care sports medicine physicians 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. Faculty coverage is broad and offers an abundance of expertise. The program is accredited by the ACGME and the ABFM.
The Program Director has been certified in Sports Medicine since certification started in 1993 and started the fellowship at Self Regional Healthcare. The Associate Director is fellowship trained and has been board certified and practicing sports medicine over ten years. He has been teaching for five years and is also fulltime attending for the family medicine residency. Our fulltime faculty also includes a family medicine and fellowship trained physician who has returned after four years of practice to fulltime teaching. All three physicians also have had extensive private practice experience and significant research accomplishments as well. The primary faculty will be present in the sports medicine clinic and at most but not all training room settings. At least one faculty will be available by pager or phone at all times.
Our Sports Medicine Experience
In addition the fellowship has educators from Orthopedic Surgery, Clinical Pathology, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Clinical Imaging, Exercise Physiology/Sports Nutrition, Physical Therapy, Pharmacology, Cardiology, Coaching/Athletic Training, Family Medicine, Dive Medicine, and Procedures/Injections. Their responsibilities include but are not limited to the following: consultation, direct teacher to the fellow, supervision of procedures and research, and lecturing.
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 70% of the time. This clinic currently sees approximately 12-18 patients in the half day and runs 8-10 half days per week. In addition, on-site sports care comprises 15% of the time, and the remaining 15% will be spent in the following settings: acute hospital in-patient care, mass participation events sports care, private ambulatory primary specialty clinic, research, didactic conferences, 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, MCFM, Lander University Athletics Training Room, Lakelands Orthopaedic Clinic, Erskine College Training Room, McCormick High School football field and training room, Calhoun Falls High School football field and training room, Dixie High school football field and training room, Greenwood Christian School, Ware Shoals High School, Ninety Six High School, YMCA Gymnastics, and the Self Regional Healthcare Imaging Center. In addition, the fellow will continue his/her primary specialty practice one half day per week with faculty precepting as well.
At these locations the fellow will be responsible for clinical decisions which will include but not be limited to injections, 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:
- Scuba experience and dive medicine teaching
- International medicine experience in Peru with >100 injections and minor surgeries in one week
- Multiple mass participation events including a half ironman, one Olympic length triathlon, and one long sprint triathlon that the fellow directs
- Erskine football coverage
- Bustling weekly procedural clinic
- Video gait analysis and training
- Invasive compartment testing
- Cardiovascular stress testing
