Orthopedic Surgeon Specialty (specialties)?

[Incognito32]

Just a quick question, since I believe this is my first post on this forum.

Can an Orthopedic Surgeon have two specialties, such as Sports Medicine AND Spine? Or something like Sports Medicine related to the spine?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[kamakazi5]

Those would be considered fellowships/subspecialties of orthopaedic surgery. After completing your residency you can choose those fellowships if you would like.

 

[BeddingfieldMD]

Can an Orthopedic Surgeon have two specialties, such as Sports Medicine AND Spine? Or something like Sports Medicine related to the spine?

Each subspecialty typically adds 1-3 years to your post-medical school training. Given your example, you would complete 5 years for orthopedic surgery, 1 year for spine, and an additional year for sports--7 years total. Possibly more if your residency program requires research time.

You can pursue as many fellowships as you can get accepted to and want to do. At some point, you might start having issues with financial aid if you do too many years of post-grad training.

In reality, you will have a very lucrative practice with either a spine or sports fellowship--and your opportunity cost for each year of an orthopedic fellowship is several hundred thousand dollars per year. So very few orthopedic surgery residents do multiple fellowships.

Good luck!


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[caffeinemia]

You should also realize that not having fellowship training doesnt necessarily mean you can't work on certain ortho indications. It really depends on your comfort after residency and the hospital physician privileges committee.

 

[Incognito32]

Thank you! It was just something that came across my mind. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I do appreciate the help.

 

[FlameBroiledDoc]

Those are also very different fields of orthopedics. Sports Medicine specialists might do general orthopedics as well, but spine surgeons tend to stick to spines (plus or minus fractures depending on the arrangements where they practice). In Canada, for example, there are lots of docs that do non-operative Sports Medicine as a fellowship after Family Medicine. If you're sports medicine minded but don't want a murderous residency and don't care about surgery, you can build a healthy practice going the Family Med route.