Curriculum/Schedule

The UC College of Medicine/University of Cincinnati Medical Center Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship is a one-year program.

Primary care sports medicine fellows complete four three-month block-clinical rotations. They are supervised by and work side-by-side in these rotations with teaching faculty who are either primary care or orthopaedic sports physicians seeing patients in traditional outpatient clinical settings.

For a portion of the rotations, fellows will see patients with one of several specialty teaching faculty. These clinics will include: sports dermatology, sports cardiology, MRI radiology, pain management-procedures, orthopedic–spine, orthopedic–hand and orthopedic–trauma. Educational opportunities within each of these specialty areas are felt to be beneficial and add important skill sets for the fellow to take into a sports medicine practice.

An understanding of inpatient surgical and outpatient procedures is included within the four three-month, block-clinical rotations portion of the curriculum. Fellows will rotate with sports-trained orthopaedic surgeons throughout the academic year. In the interests of continuity of care, fellows are encouraged to observe any inpatient procedures done on the faculties’ panel.

Within this 12-month curriculum structure, fellows will be exposed to a broad range of learning opportunities meeting the ACGME core curriculum requirements, in addition to the Essential Curriculum (milestones), which when completed will enable the fellow the practice as an independent provider of primary care sports medicine.

Longitudinal Curriculum

In addition to clinical responsibilities, fellows provide onsite (athletic training room) and sports event coverage as a portion of the longitudinal curriculum.  At the beginning of the academic year, fellows are assigned to “cover” either the University of Cincinnati or Miami University and a local high school for the entire academic year.

Fellows are assigned to “cover” or be a first provider for several sporting events and weekly training room visits throughout the year. Many events or training room visits are covered with one or more of the teaching faculty also present. In order to encourage independent learning and decision making, there are also several opportunities for the fellow to cover events or training room visits without the teaching faculty present.

An important portion of the longitudinal curriculum is the development of the fellow’s primary care skills. Fellows work 1-2 half days/week in the same primary care clinic, throughout the academic year, in their BC/BE designated primary care specialty.

Didactics

The primary didactic conference is the Weekly Fellows Conference. This conference is presentation based with an interactive question and answer session for faculty, fellows and guests. The lecture includes a component on how the topic impacts the daily practice of sports medicine. Several other didactic opportunities are available throughout the year, including a one-day “Research Boot Camp.”

Fellows are also be given time off to attend both the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine and the American College of Sports Medicine national conferences.

The Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine has annually offered two weekend conferences devoted to sports medicine and trauma, respectively. The sports medicine conference annually focuses on presenting state-of-the-art preventive, evaluative and management strategies and is geared toward athletic trainers and sports therapists. The trauma conference also focuses on providing annual updates in trauma care and is directed toward physicians and other emergency providers. Fellows will be asked to give one to two presentations during either or both of these conferences.

Scholarly Effort (Research)

During the academic year, fellows are expected to complete either a research project or scholarly effort. Within the Longitudinal Curriculum there will be frequent and regular time blocks dedicated to work on scholarly efforts.