As a fellow, you're expected to embrace the concept of lifelong learning and actively pursue educational opportunities throughout your year of training. The fellowship provides access to a wide array of learning resources, including recommended texts, an electronic curriculum of selected papers and topic reviews, and access to comprehensive literature reviews and assistance through Mayo Clinic Libraries.

Clinical training

Five half days a week, you staff a sports medicine clinic and are supervised by an attending physician with a CAQ in sports medicine. you're given greater independence as your clinical competence increases.

These clinics average four to eight patients per half day. Patients have a variety of complaints from osteoarthritis and tendon dysfunction to concussion and acute fractures. The patient population ranges from youth athletes to weekend warriors to professional world-class competitors.

In addition, you have monthly rotations in various related specialties where you spend four half-days a week working with other faculty members. These monthly rotations include:

• Orthopedics
• Nutrition
• Musculoskeletal radiology
• Hand surgery
• Pediatric orthopedics
• Physical therapy
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R)
• Research
• Elective

You must also spend one half-day a week working in your subspecialty. As an example, for primary care, this means caring for general family practice patients in the family medicine clinic; while for PM&R, you would be working with our PM&R consultants.

Throughout the year, you're instructed on common sports medicine procedures such as injections; both landmark and ultrasound guided. There is a longitudinal MSK US curriculum with weekly didactics and cadaver lab experience. In addition, the MSK US faculty have weekly one-on-one teaching sessions which have been invaluable.

Teaching opportunities

You should also be prepared to participate in the education of visiting medical students and family medicine residents. Past fellows have put on musculoskeletal workshops and injection seminars as well as spent time educating residents one-on-one. you're expected to take on educational tasks commensurate with your level of sports medicine knowledge.

Evaluation

To ensure you acquire adequate knowledge and develop the appropriate technical skills to meet program expectations, your performance is monitored carefully during the Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship. you're formally evaluated by supervising faculty members on a regular basis and meet with the program director to review these evaluations. In addition, you regularly evaluate the faculty to confirm your educational needs are being met.