Sports medicine is an important field of medical practice related to the medical treatment of injuries resulting from athletic activities. A physician whose prime practice is sports medicine mainly focuses on sports-related medical services. These can be preventative measures from injuries such as conditioning and injury prevention, as well as medical treatments like rehabilitation, osteopathic manipulation, or injections.
Sports medicine healthcare providers have a particular type of training to restore function to injured patients so they can get back to sports again as soon as possible. They have expertise in preventing illness and injury in active people. Sports healthcare providers generally work with professional athletes to help those combat injuries before they get serious.
However, they are also skilled in treating children and teens involved in sports. They can also be personal fitness trainers to the adults who exercise. Moreover, they medically treat people who have physically demanding jobs, like construction workers.
Generally, sports medicine healthcare providers are certified individuals in internal medicine, emergency medicine, family medicine, or another specialty. Other practitioners specialize in treating injuries in children and teens, whose growing bodies can be quite different from those of adults.
Some medical experts who are not healthcare providers can also work with a sports medicine healthcare provider to offer medical care like:
- Physical therapists. They primarily help people rehabilitate and recover from injuries.
- Certified athletic trainers. They provide rehab exercise routines to build back the lost strength in patients. They also develop conditioning programs to prevent future injury.
They generally focus on offering weight loss or weight gain. They can provide dietary advice as well to help people improve their physical functioning.
Sometimes the children may see a sports medicine physicians for an injury such as:
- Ankle sprain
- Fracture
- Knee and shoulder injury
- Tendonitis
- Exercise-induced asthma
- Heat illness
- Concussion
- Eating disorder
- Cartilage injury
Sports medicine healthcare providers can also give advice on nutrition, supplements, exercise, and injury prevention.
