Sports Medicine Fellowship Reviews

[skeletor]

Can anyone provide information on Tahoe, Taos, and Aspen fellowships? I'm thinking I'd like to train and live in a ski town and all i've heard about on this forum is Vail.
Thanks!

[Beachbum2]

I am doing a fellowship now so here is a summary on my program, since nobody has touched on it yet:

Brown University is a little known program because it is relatively new, but it is great so far. I am getting a lot of surgical experience and most importantly surgical independence. I am allowed, to some extent, to tailor my schedule to match my interests. If I want more shoulder or hip etc, they will let me make changes to my rotations to accommodate. This is a huge advantage.

This is a very hands on fellowship and the sports coverage is too. You are in essence a team doctor for Brown University and the Providence Bruins professional hockey team. Sports coverage is busy in the fall, but lightens up a lot after Thanksgiving. At no point do you feel this is an observational fellowship.

Another big advantage that I did not realize until I got here is the residency. You are never fighting for attention, but they do make your life MUCH easier. There is no call, virtually no rounding or scut work.

[Tap it]

stay away from Nirschl Fellowship

[iheartbones]

Impressions of Wake Forest and University of South Florida? Thanks!

[CC2011]

Did Paulos leave the Andrews Institute? Doesn't seem to be on the website anymore.

[2012match]

Anyone have any insight on the program in Jackson, Mississippi? 1,000 cases seems to be a bold claim for case numbers when the number seems to be 500 at lot of other places, but maybe they are able to accomplish it. I have not ben down there yet, but for anyone who has already done their interview or has done the fellowship:

1. Did you feel there was a fair amount of teaching as well as operating, or were you basically just doing cases?

2. Was there any arthroplasty? (TKA's, total hips etc.)

3. Are there any other programs where the fellows are doing that many cases?

[CAOrtho31]

What are people's take on the New England Baptist Sports Fellowship? Is is considered at top 10 fellowship nationwide?
They have great team coverage with Celtics, Harvard and Tufts, a very complete national alumni network, wide array of operative exposure except for for hip and some big names (Richmond, Curtis, Steiner, McKeon).

Also, what is the opinion about Baylor and Methodist now that they are officially separating for 2012-2013. Do you guys think one program will be better than the other for training? It was hard to get a good feeling on where it will be in two years.

Thanks in advance.

[jlack]

No take on NE baptist. But regarding Baylor/TMH: very disappointing. Everything seemed very unorganized and certainly neither program is as strong without the other. I agree that it was hard to get a feeling on where this will be in two years, which is unsettling...

[Bone Diddley]

Has anybody heard anything about the Boston University program?

[CC2011]

any thoughts on programs now that match day has passed?

[TruthMayhem]

A few words of advice for residents.

1.Talk to the recent FORMER fellows. The current fellows are in no political position to tell you the truth. They are trying to get through the year peacefully after 5 years of residency LABOR. This goes for any fellowship.

2.Think hard about what you want from the fellowship. You will be a board-eligible surgeon at that point and that year is extremely valuable. This should NOT be an automatic decision despite what you hear.

3.Location. I’ll give you a tip about how the location thing works. If you want to end up in a less “desirable” area, doing a fellowship there will get you over the why here questions and will help. If you want to end up in a “desirable” area, doing a fellowship there will likely not help and might actually hurt your chances of ending up there. UNLESS you of course get a job at your fellowship place (those chances are slim). This is the real world. You will be direct competition and even if you don’t have to sign non-competes, your faculty will not be helpful in your job search locally. Furthermore, you will not be bringing any new (or perceived new) ideas to the collective orthopaedic community in that area.

4.Make sure the fellowship has repeat “customers”. If the fellowship, with 3 or more positions, has not had anyone from the same residency in 5-6 years that is a BIG red flag. Discount consecutive years because neither resident has experienced the fellowship before matching. We usually want to interpret this as programs training “bad” residents thus the fellowship doesn’t want them. This may be the case in a few cases. In all actuality, it is more likely the fellows hated the program and told residents from home program to avoid it.

5.Your residency gets you a job. They have known you for 5 years. Your fellowship attendings are usually not going to go all out for you after a few months of knowing you. It does look good for your marketing to patients though. You really have to shine BRIGHT to get that kind of support. This cannot be your strategy. This is not high school anymore. Your co-fellows are also board-eligible orthopaedic surgeons and “shining” in this case is more like luck.

6.What is not a good measure is whether the home program resident wants to stay for fellowship. Most programs encourage their residents to leave for fellowship even if they are coming back there as attendings. Also, in my experience, many residents who do stay for fellowship usually do so for other reasons than the strength of fellowship.

My opinion. Good luck.

[OsteoChondral]

Surprised no one else has posted for this year yet. Here are my rankings

Tier 1 (in order):

1. Steadman Phillipon Vail - Leaders in all fields here. Unbelievable pathology in knee, shoulder, and hip. Seems a little hands-off but I can deal with it. Laprade, Millett, etc. Living in Vail is expensive but managable. Not sure how much hip arthroscopy I want to be doing, and this fellowship probably gives me more than I want. Other than that, super strong in everything else. Go around the nation too: ex-Steadman fellows are the leaders in the field.

2. Rush - exceptional in all aspects of sports medicine. Academics obviously pushed here. Bach wants to train the next leaders in sports medicine. Nho is going to be huge soon. Cole is a stud, but we heard he's operating more on Saturdays now after the medicare incident. Good team coverage but not overbearing. Romeo is hands-on but you can learn the most from him. Bach is the consummate mentor. It was close between Rush and Steadman for No. 1 but I chose Steadman after meeting a few Steadman fellows around my community. Rumor of Romeo moving to LA.

3. Stanford - Its reputation as the biggest "up-and-comer" is over; this fellowship seems like it hits on all cylinders. Great team coverage, great operative experience, awesome place to live, and really nice guys to work with. 4 months of research where you run your own room for 2 days of the week. There are two weaknesses that some may feel limit it: Safran is apparently SUPER HANDS-ON and you don't do much (which is fine by me as I don't really care for hip scopes), and there is little-to-no open shoulder/shoulder arthroplasty. Apparently the hand fellows get all those cases. That was the killer for me, and dropped it to number 3. Probably would have been number 1 otherwise.

Tier 2:

4. HSS - Everyone seemed to love this place, and it is impressive. The fellows talk about all the cases you get to do, but I really wonder how much the fellows are doing. I talked with a guy from my residency who did this fellowship a few years ago, and he said the operative experience wasn't all it was advertised. But as far as sheer volume goes, there's no beating this place. Lots of perks too.

5. Pittsburgh - Everyone seems fine, but nothing stands out. I remember interviewing here for residency here and everyone seemed unhappy. There are stories of how unpleasant Foo is with his fellows. Lots of volume. Pittsburgh is kind of bleh....

6. UConn - very surprised with this fellowship. I thought it was going to be a back-up spot but I ranked it over HSS and Pitt. Mazzocca and deBernardino seems manic but good to work with. Arciero seems like the ultimate teacher. Actually Arciero and Bach reminded me of eachother. A really good fellowship.

Last Tier:

Wash U
Kerlan-Jobe
MGH (although if the rumor of Provencher coming is true, it would defnitely be bumped up! Just didn't like Boston...)

Matched in my first tier but really would have been happy at any of my top 6. There's a lot of great fellowships out there. You just have to find what's right for you.

[DA-Hip]

Places I loved this past year when interviewing. I wanted an Operative Heavy fellowship as I am likely going to go into private practice. Team coverage was low on my priority as was research. I basically want to do as many cases as I can and have a great year doing it. I called everyone I knew before I applied and I tried to get the inside scoop on the fellowships before I interviewed. These programs are the highlights.

University of Rochester – this is an awesome program that I think it really under the radar. This is a very operative heavy fellowship with the full spectrum of sports being offered. The faculty continually said that they want the fellow to have the best training experience possible. The fellow chooses the cases each week that he wants to scrub and can actively seek out other interesting cases if they are going on. Each of the staff has a different training background, so you will see the full spectrum within sports medicine. The full variety of grafts for ACLs (BTB autografts, hamstring and allo), both beach chair and lateral decubitus for shoulders, multiligament knee injuries, HTO’s, OATs, open shoulder, laterjets, elbow arthroscopy, etc. etc. They have a guy who does an insane number of hip arthroscopies and you can work with him as much as you want. There is also a Bigliani-trained shoulder surgeon on staff that you can work with each week who does approximately 100 totals per year, 20-30 reverses and a good share of proximal humerus fractures. The research opportunities are there and they have an impressive research facility if you are interested, but this was not emphasized as a requirement. There is a basic structure to each week, but the flexibility is there to tailor your year.

The first and foremost selling point of the program for me was the faculty are a great group of guys that clearly like working together and they enjoy their time with the fellow. This is just a gut feeling, but this group has good energy and this is a fellowship on the rise. They have talked about expanding the fellowship to two fellows as the volume is there and this may happen over the next couple of years. There are no call responsibilities and if you are interested, you can volunteer to help teach residents arthroscopy skills in an awesome wet lab that is part of their surgery center. As you probably can tell, I loved this place.

Mississippi Sports Medicine – this place was ‘as advertised’. This place is a huge Sports Hub in the south and the volume of patients that are seen in this clinic each day is mind-blowing. The informal dinner the night before was great as we talked to both the fellows and the staff about the program and life in Mississippi. During the football year it is really busy as it the mission of the clinic to cover every football game in Mississippi. So the whole clinic (including hand and arthroplasty staff) are covering games. The fellows spend two 5 week blocks with Dr. Savoie in New Orleans (which the fellows said was awesome) and they have housing provided for you while you are there. The rest of the time you are based out of the Jackson clinic. There are Wednesday morning didactic sessions with the fellows and there is a large dry lab. The fellows log around 1000 cases per year and they showed us several of the past fellows ACGME case logs. After the interview day, several of us went to one of the outpatient surgery centers with Dr. Fields and watched him operate. I have NEVER seen a place that efficient in my training. The rooms were turning over so fast he was tying his last knot for a cuff repair and the patient in the other room was prepped/draped.

This is a big clinic with a lot of opportunity. Again, if you want to have an operative heavy fellowship, this is one of them. Jackson itself was not what I had expected and was a bit run down near the hospital. I asked the fellows where they lived and drove to check out this part of the city. It was very nice and had the full scale of amenities for living. You could easily have a nice huge house in the area North or East of Jackson for a reasonable price. In addition, you get paid $450 a night for call and the fellows said the call was very easy. You can take as little or as much call as you want, but most said they liked the call as it was easy money and not burdensome.

Taos – great place and great experience. The key thing I noticed when I was here is that they have a continual pipeline of residents from the same programs come to this fellowship. In my opinion, that says a lot about this program. Word of mouth from former residents to current residents of the same training program speaks volumes about a place. Clearly, they have fellows from a variety of residency programs, but there were several programs that have residents who have chosen this program on a regular basis. I really liked the faculty and I think they would be great to train with. The fellows said that you learn a lot from them on how to run a business during the year and this would be valuable to learn prior to starting your practice. Lubowitz is the ACL guru and you will learn his sweet All-inside ACL Graftlink technique. Guttman is primarily a shoulder guy. He does a lot of open shoulder in addition to arthroscopy. Dr. Reid does the full spectrum of a general practice. He does total knees, sports and also helps the fellows with the trauma that comes in. This is a true mentorship-style of training as it is a small group of guys and they spend a lot of time teaching you. The fellows share call (which is paid) and you can take on whatever cases you would like. Polytrauma or the complex fractures get shipped out, but this is rare. The coolest thing about this place was that it is a small skiing village in the Northern part of New Mexico. The hospital is a smaller Level 3 hospital, but the reputation of the clinic draws from all over the place. The fellows here were very happy and this program was high on my list.

University of Buffalo – I liked this place a lot also. It was a great group of faculty and they were clearly dedicated to teaching the fellows. Les Bisson (the fellowship director) was an awesome guy and someone that you would want as a mentor. The biggest selling point with the program is that at the beginning of the year you pick which pro team you want to cover. You and the other fellow decide who is going to cover the Bills and who is going to cover the Sabres. During the fellowship year, you become deeply integrated with the team and the players get to know who you are. You get to travel with the teams to various professional games if you like. I think this is another operative heavy fellowship with the full spectrum of sports medicine being offered.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Good Luck!

[scopedoc]

Here are reviews of the places I interviewed at, in no specific order.

HSS
Big program, 9 fellows a year if you count the international research fellow (who is less clinical). A lot of attendings, which means that every fellow does not do the same rotations--you pick at the beginning of the year. So if you know you want to do a lot of hip scope for example you can make that a priority when picking rotations. Very academic and everyone does research, but mostly projects that are carried over from previous year because the IRB is notoriously slow. A lot of support for research in terms of labs, staffing, students, etc. OR experience sounds to be variable based on what I heard from current fellows--a high case volume but a lot of private pts and "VIPs" means it can be hands off, esp with certain attendings. But upside to the program is obvious in terms of the faculty, reputation, and alumni network. Sports coverage for Knicks, Giants, and a bunch of local HS and college teams that various attendings are affiliated with. I don't remember details about call responsibilities, but something like one weekend every month or two, don't think it was a lot. But can be hectic during the in-season with team coverage.


Somewhat formal (business attire) pre-interview cocktail hour and dinner the night before. All the important attendings are there. Scott Rodeo the PD gives a overview presentation about the fellowship over a sit-down dinner. Current fellows are around for questions. Everyone goes.
Interview day is 4 rooms (maybe 5?) with a small group of 3-5 attendings in each room. There is one room each for cases, ethics, and research.

New England Baptist
Four fellows a year, potentially going down to three because of funding issues according to the chairman's talk on my interview day. Community-type program. NE baptist hospital is almost a all-ortho hospital, doesn't have a general ER/medicine floors. Fellows operate a ton on bread and butter cases (some have 500 procedures by 6-7months into the fellowship because all the attendings run multiple rooms and the turnover time is blazing fast in their private practice surgicenters). No as much special stuff like multi-lig knees or hip scope. Minimal call and research obligations. Can take extra call as general ortho consult/floor doc and get paid for it over the weekends, which a lot of the fellows did. Covers Harvard football, hockey, and some other smaller college. Every fellow takes turns covering Celtics. Overall a good community program with fellows that seemed to be happy and operated a good amount, but not high caliber in terms of research/academics.


No pre-interview event. Post-interview social is one of the best of the trail with dinner at a Celtics game private box, with mingling with attendings and fellows, followed by going out with fellows to a local bar. Interview day was well organized, with four or so rooms with about 3 attendings in each, standard questions about yourself and research, nothing hard or out of the ordinary.


Lennox Hill
Three fellows a year, mostly bread and butter cases but good operative volume because there are more cases than the fellows can cover (they have a lot of PAs). Nicholas research institute has good support for research, but you don't have to do a ton of it here. All three fellows I talked to were very happy with the program (they made a point of saying this over and over, but it seemed genuine); mainly because they said call is light to non-existent which gives them time to enjoy NY and family time. They cover the Jets, along with some local HS teams. Elbow, foot/ankle, hip scopes, and multi-lig knees more rare, but do exist.


Interview day was not well organized and unfortunately gave me bad impression of program even though the fellows there insisted it was not reflective of their overall experience. Four or five rooms with a few attendings in each, with long waits in between. All get to know you questions, except one room where they focused on research. They asked me to critique my research like I was a reviewer. There is no peri-interview social event, which is unusual.


Kerlan Jobe
Seven fellows a year, work at a orthopedic sports medicine specialty practice with incredible alumni network. Offers all the standard cases plus faculty doing a lot of ankles, elbows, and hip scopes. Good open shoulder experience also in terms of arthroplasty (very little trauma though). A lot of driving around to difference clinical sites and for game coverage, but 80% of time is spent operating at their main surgi-center in LA (which is where the interview is). Light call responsibilities since there are no inpatients on most rotations, just take occasional practice call. Most of call time is spent on team coverage, which the fellows I talked to insisted was not overbearing even when multiple sports running. Covers all LA pro teams (only downer is LA doesn't have pro football); you are always there with attending at pro teams but spend plenty of time in the locker room and on the sidelines. A lot of athletes coming through the clinic and ORs, so some have said only downside to KJ is it can be more hands on for the fellows. Overall good balance of work-play for a year in LA. Arthrex lab on site (people go from all over Southern Cali to their lab for courses) means you can practice on cadavers literally anytime, you just book ahead. Research depends on you--they have a lot of resources and support, but minimal requirement is 1 or 2 studies, so some fellows take it easy while others do more because they like it. Didn't seem like there was a lot of pressure about it either way. No residents, +PAs. Notoriously low pay


Interview day a little hectic because our year SCOI had their interview the same day across town. (most years KJ and SCOI split sat/sun of the weekend). About 3-4 rooms with handful of attendings each room. Mostly get to know you questions, talk about research, career goals, why you want to be in LA even though you're from east coast, etc. Post-interview social hour at a nice water-front restaurant in Marina Del Rey, unfortunately very few attendings and fellows came, not sure why,

SCOI
Five fellows a year, overall excellent program that I really liked. What set them apart was faculty very dedicated to teaching the fellows, they're a private ortho group with a big surgicenter (similar to Kerlan Jobe model) so no residents. They pride themselves on the "SCOI way" of doing shoulder scopes championed by Dr. Snyder, and actually spend a good amount of time in the dry lab with scope simulators the first couple months they are there, which I personally like but you can decide if that's something you want. But faculty and fellows seemed genuinely happy working with each other (they showed a roast-like video with fellows and attendings, and they seem to actually hang out together, etc). Case-wise they get a good mix including hip and ankle scopes (the PD Ferkel is F&A sports doc and is busy). They have 1-2 attendings who do mostly hip scopes. Don't remember open shoulder to be a highlight though. Would definitely consider SCOI if you want to be in LA


Interview day very well organized. Three or four rooms with small panel in each. Asked a lot about research, no content or case questions. No ethics that I can recall. No curveballs. Post interview social was fellows only, no attendings, and all fellows went which is a good sign.

San Diego Tasto
Smaller program (3 a year I think, with one additional spot reserved for military) with good surgical volume, large practice with more than enough cases to go around. But definitely more laid-back than any other program I interviewed at and the fellows are quick to point that out as bring a good thing--no research requirement, no call, minimal team coverage. Seemed like not enough work to me to be prepared out in practice. Interview day Tasto was there there leading the show, but he is retired and doesn't operate anymore. The co-program directors who actually still operate were both not there, they were at spring training for the Padres. This was disappointing that the PD would not be at their own interview day, esp when dates of both spring training and interviews are pre-determined and can be scheduled not to conflict. Interviews were two rooms with a huge panel (10-12!) in each so hard to know who to look at when talking...one attending in each room was responsible for going through your app and dirrected the interview with questions. Very shoulder heavy program (70/30 shoulder/knee), little to no hip/footankle scope.

San Diego Kaiser
I interviewed here mainly to learn more about the Kaiser system since they are such a big employer in California, but ended up liking the program much more than expected. Small program with two fellows a year. They operate at four different Kaiser surgi-centers in SD area. Both fellows really liked the program so far, unique feature is they each have their own clinic where they are junior attendings and book their own patients, and see them in follow-up and do all the post-op management (not seen by an attending). For these cases they are the primary surgeon in the OR, you have a conference each week with your attending on that rotation to discuss your cases and tweek your OR plan. You inherit the followup pts of the previous fellows. Downside to the program is that case volume is not as robust as many other programs (400per year according to the current fellows) and they are almost all bread and butter shoulder and knee cases. Very little hip scope or open shoulder experience. Also very light in terms of team coverage, research, and there is no call whatsoever.

Interview day was most laid back on the trail but well organized. No pre-interview social. All rooms were with 2 or 3 attendings who were all very casual and just asked get to know you type questions, and highlighed why they liked the program and working for Kaiser. They themselves are not very academic in terms of research or formal teaching (no residents) so they don't expect that from their fellows either. Same concern here as the other program in SD about how prepared you'll feel to be out in practice on your own, but difference what that at Kaiser the attendings seemed a lot more invested in the fellows education and fellows said they get very good support and mentorship, and get to do their own clinic cases, whereas at SD Tasto they talked more about how they use their abundant down-time outside of the hospital.

[Jimmy Chipwood]

Thanks to all those who have posted reviews. Very helpful.

Anyone with knowledge of Univ of Iowa? Residency program has such a great reputation, just wondering about their sports fellowship.