DOC TALK WITH DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA: "WHO ARE ALL THE DOCTORS WHO SEEM TO BE TRAINING?"
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BELOW DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA ANSWER: WHO ARE ALL THE DOCTORS WHO SEEM TO BE TRAINING?
Dr. Girling: So Doc, tell me a little bit about why we have so many people in our clinic that seem to be training. They're constantly, "Hey, we've got somebody here, that guy's training, this guy's training." What are all these trainees going around?
Dr. Palomera: I know you will sometimes have a resident or somebody following you. Why do we always have so many fellows and residents and medical students following us? There's a lot of times people think that we're actually faculty at a medical school here in town and we have this practice on the side. But, quite honestly, I don't know how much you've gotten approached about that. I tell them all the time. And you know, we make sure that people are comfortable being seen by them. They're always supervised one on one, they're not replacing us. This is, this is not another doctor seeing them instead of us. But part of our mission statement when we first formed the group, is we wanted to be involved in the Higher Learning of not only medicine but orthopedics, sports medicine. Sports medicine has now evolved to include, you know, treating degenerative conditions, how do we keep people away from replacements, what do we do once they need the replacements.
You see a lot of replacements that have needed revisions or need to be redone. "How do I do well after I've had a second replacement surgery?" I think we have a lot to offer with the great patients we treat, with everything we treat from foot injuries, all the way to neck injuries and concussions, where they can really really learn from us. A lot of the residents and medical students are used to being in institutions, which, which is a different way of seeing patients. I think we all admit that going through the training, they like seeing patients in private practice. It's just a different feel, not necessarily better, but just a different feel. And they see how things work, how we interchange. We are not the same specialty, we're trained very differently than I was but I think what that does is help build better doctors for the future.
Dr. Girling: For sure. I think on the clinical side, it's like whenever you're in a private practice setting, I remember in training it was a completely different experience than those that only trained in academics. And that's why I think all of us feel an obligation and we feel very strongly about making sure we have trainees in our clinics. Our practice is so unique in the makeup, how we serve patients, the volume, and things of that nature. If we don't allow for trainees to see that, whenever they get out, they're going to struggle. But I think we do a good balance at protecting patients from that. And if they never want to have you know, somebody in there that's in training, they don't have to have them in the room at all and that's always an option. But I think most patients appreciate how we use them. They're not there to do any of the things that we would normally do. They're really there to learn, observe, absorb that information. And then of course they offer their own unique benefits.
Dr. Palomera: I don't think most people know but the majority of our Doc's at Sports Medicine Associates, were actually residents and fellows in Sports Medicine Associates before we became physicians.
Dr. Girling: We're primarily very locally born and bred. We tend to be very Texas heavy, Central Texas heavy, San Antonio heavy, kind of all around. So I think that's one of the unique characteristics that we are heavily involved in the community and training is part of that.
Dr. Palomera: We're the “from farm to table” version of physicians, here in San Antonio.