General orthopaedics is kinda like general internal medicine, minus the primary care crap and plus the fact that you are still a specialist. In a general orthopaedic practice, you do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. You will and can do pretty much everything that you were trained to do in your residency, except maybe tumor, spine, and maybe the major pelvis/acetabluar fractures (will probably wanna be fellowship trained for those types of surgeries, although it may not be necessary for more straight-forward cases, if you feel comfortable doing it, or even possible if you're in a small community). You'll do the fractures that's referred to you from the ER or primary care, you can do total joints (probably mostly primary and not revisions unless they're straight-forward), do knee scopes and ACLs, shoulder scopes, and hand stuff.
Many community ortthopaedic surgeons are general orthopaedic surgeons. Even if you do a fellowship and go into private practice, most of your practice will probably initially be general orthopaedics until you build up a good referral base.
From my experience (working with a sports guy), most complex arthroscopic stuff is done by those who are fellowsip-trained in sports. You probably don't wanna be doing a elbow scope without being fellowship trained in sports. The minimally invasive stuff like arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs and mininmally invasive total hips right now are being done by fellowship trained surgeons. This may change as more outcomes research are published and the field moves toward these procedures being the standard of practice.
