DOC TALK WITH DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA: "WHY IS DR. PALOMERA NOT A SURGEON?"
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BELOW DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA ANSWER: WHY IS DR. PALOMERA NOT A SURGEON?
Dr. Girling: Why aren't you a surgeon?
Dr. Palomera: You know, that's a question I get asked weekly. And I've been in practice for a bunch of weeks for 20 years. So I always get asked, When am I going to go back and finish my residency? When am I going to grow up and become a surgeon like Dr. Girling? Even though he's about 15 years younger than me, and so forth. And so, there's a sports medicine specialty that exists within primary care. So many of us are family medicine trained to begin with. But we did an extra year of training, what they call fellowship after our residency to be specialized in nonoperative sports medicine, musculoskeletal medicine, primary care sports medicine, whatever you want to call it. And we can become board certified in it. And fortunately, here, at Sports Medicine Associates, there are more than half a dozen of us that this is our career. We're really busy enough doing this, we don't do any primary care. The fact of the matter is, is that while a lot of stuff is surgical, probably the majority of what walks in the office is nonsurgical. We are trained to recognize, "Hey, that you're not going to get better without surgery, I need to get you in quickly." Versus "Here are your options." And quite honestly, in the end, I think a lot of patients once they realize that really appreciate the fact that, not only the primary care sports medicine doctors, the surgeons as well are not looking at surgery as the first and only outcome. "What are my options? Let me decide." "Tell me what the pros and cons are and what can I expect?" And then we go from there. And I think for some people, it's confusing at first. But in the end, it generates a lot of referrals because they understand how we do stuff.
Dr. Girling: They say in the world of a hammer, everybody's a nail. It's like if you only go to a surgical practice, and that's all there is, you're probably going to end up with a lot of surgery. So I think it's really useful in our practice, to know we have both elements there all the time. You know, you've got the sports medicine side that focuses on the non-operative treatment with a huge amount of interventional options. And then you have the surgical side available and we crossover at times. But I think it's valuable to have folks in the office that aren't necessarily surgical, and it's not because you couldn't have done it. It's purely because that's the decision you made. That's where the clinical pathway was. So I think it's still valuable.
Dr. Palomera: It's still good. I think I'm grown up though. I'm not gonna make any career changes. I think my wife would appreciate it.
Dr. Girling: Probably.