I have noticed that several attendings that I know have done both sports and shoulder/elbow fellowships. I am a junior resident trying to decide on a subspecialty for fellowship training. I am having particular difficulty deciding between sports and shoulder/elbow. Ideally, I would like to someday have a practice where I do arthroscopy of the knee, shoulder, elbow as well as shoulder arthroplasty.
I know that each individual fellowship program is unique. i.e. Some sports programs give fellows more of a shoulder/elbow experience than others. Similiarly, some shoulder/elbow programs provide more exposure to sports and team coverage than others.
What are the pros/cons of doing two fellowships? Certainly, there are financial reasons to go into practice one year sooner, but I am willing to live like a resident/fellow for one more year before collecting a bigger paycheck. I am more interested in hearing if doing 2 fellowships puts you into a sort of "pickle" when looking for a job in the sense that you essentially have to decide if you want to be a shoulder/elbow guy or a sports guy. Would I be making myself more or less marketable by doing 2 fellowships? Am I better off just picking one or the other?
I did 2 fellowships but more for personal/geographic reasons than for truly professional ones. In the old days, the sports fellowships and the shoulder/elbow fellowships were clearly very different entities. That still holds true for the most part today however there are some "Sports Medicine" fellowships which include a great deal of complex open shoulder and potentially elbow pathology including: Rush, HSS, Pittsburgh and Carolinas Medical Center (to name just a few).
In the Shoulder and Elbow world, the Columbia fellowship is the only one that is accredited by the ACGME as a Sports Medicine fellowship which allows our graduates to sit for the SSC examination (formerly called the CAQ) designating subspecialty expertise in sports medicine.
I think it's very important for you to be more specific in your decision-making to help make the best decision. If you are truly interested in having a sports medicine/arthroscopy practice where you also do a high percentage of open shoulder surgery (not just "total shoulder replacement") then you should consider any of the above-mentioned fellowships and investigate further.
