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Career Description

Diagnose, treat and help prevent injuries that occur during sporting events, athletic training and physical activities.

What Job Titles Sports Medicine Physicians Might Have

• Director of Sports Medicine
• Orthopaedic Surgeon
• Physician
• Sports Medicine Physician

What Sports Medicine Physicians Do

• Diagnose or treat disorders of the musculoskeletal system.
• Order and interpret the results of laboratory tests and diagnostic imaging procedures.
• Advise against injured athletes returning to games or competition if resuming activity could lead to further injury.
• Record athletes' medical care information and maintain medical records.
• Record athletes' medical histories and perform physical examinations.
• Examine and evaluate athletes prior to participation in sports activities to determine level of physical fitness or predisposition to injuries.
• Coordinate sports care activities with other experts including specialty physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, or coaches.
• Provide education and counseling on illness and injury prevention.
• Participate in continuing education activities to improve and maintain knowledge and skills.
• Advise athletes, trainers, or coaches to alter or cease sports practices that are potentially harmful.
• Inform coaches, trainers, or other interested parties regarding the medical conditions of athletes.
• Examine, evaluate and treat athletes who have been injured or who have medical problems such as exercise-induced asthma.
• Supervise the rehabilitation of injured athletes.
• Refer athletes for specialized consultation, physical therapy, or diagnostic testing.
• Prescribe medications for the treatment of athletic-related injuries.
• Inform athletes about nutrition, hydration, dietary supplements, or uses and possible consequences of medication.
• Develop and test procedures for dealing with emergencies during practices or competitions.
• Attend games and competitions to provide evaluation and treatment of activity-related injuries or medical conditions.
• Advise coaches, trainers, or physical therapists on the proper use of exercises and other therapeutic techniques and alert them to potentially dangerous practices.
• Observe and evaluate athletes' mental well-being.
• Select and prepare medical equipment or medications to be taken to athletic competition sites.
• Conduct research in the prevention or treatment of injuries or medical conditions related to sports and exercise.
• Prescribe orthotics, prosthetics, and adaptive equipment.
• Evaluate and manage chronic pain conditions.
• Develop and prescribe exercise programs such as off-season conditioning regimens.
• Provide coaches and therapists with assistance in selecting and fitting protective equipment.

What Sports Medicine Physicians Should Be Good At

• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Written Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
• Category Flexibility - The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
• Flexibility of Closure - The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.

What Sports Medicine Physicians Should Be Interested In

• Investigative - Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
• Realistic - Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

What Sports Medicine Physicians Need to Learn

• Medicine and Dentistry - Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
• Biology - Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
• Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.