Background: More than 30 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports in the United States every year. Participation has numerous benefits including improved physical fitness and better school performance, however, it is not without risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children sustain more than 3.1 million sports and recreation-related injuries each year that are treated in various medical settings. As many as 90,000 of these children are hospitalized. The typical 3-year residency program provides less than 6 hours of training in this area. In one cross-sectional survey of more than 200 pediatric chief residents, a majority reported receiving inadequate sports medicine training. To address this problem, our pediatric residency program has introduced an innovative sports medicine experience into the curriculum.
Purpose: To implement an immersive and collaborative model for sports medicine training in order to provide pediatric residents with the knowledge and skills needed to correctly diagnose and effectively manage sports-related conditions in children and adolescents.
Description: A new sports medicine training model was introduced to PGY-1 pediatric residents (N=8) in a single program in July 2018. The curriculum included didactic sessions on musculoskeletal exams and common injuries, concussion diagnosis and management, practical splinting workshops, as well as extensive field time acting as the team physician for local sports teams. Each PGY-1 resident was paired with a local high school varsity football team as the designated team physician. Working in collaboration with the team’s athletic trainer and coaches, responsibilities included performing immediate sideline triage of sustained injuries, performing focused physical exams, assessing level of consciousness, and making return-to-play decisions as appropriate under the indirect supervision of a sports medicine sub-specialist. Throughout the season, residents conferenced regularly with program leaders to discuss the experience, review injuries that occurred, and debrief as needed. Resident feedback was consistently positive. In July 2019, the program expanded to include both PGY-1 and PGY-2 residents (N=16) who spent more than 150 combined hours on the field at 54 football games covering 9 local teams.
Conclusions: There is a clear need for pediatricians to receive training in sports medicine to treat the large number of children who sustain sports-related injuries each year. Yet pediatric residents have traditionally had limited exposure to sports medicine. To address this, we implemented a novel sports medicine training model in our residency curriculum, successfully demonstrating a viable method for training future pediatricians who will ultimately treat this cohort of patients both in and out of the hospital.