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Thank you so much. And wanted to thank all the people on our panel today. And thanks for everyone else who's kind of here to learn a little bit more. So this is going to be like a pretty informal session, just a way for you to get to know some of the people on the panel here today. Get some of your hopefully questions answered related to PM&R sports medicine and potentially the application process. I have some kind of my own questions to get the ball rolling, but certainly want to make this session about all the participants too and make sure that you guys get kind of what you need out of it. I think we'll start by everyone on the panel and introducing themselves. So my name is Crystal Graff. I'm currently one of the sports medicine fellows at University of Iowa. I did my PM&R residency at the University of Colorado. What else? I am in the process of kind of figuring out my job, most likely will be taking a position in Chicago though. So if anyone has questions about the Midwest region, I can help answer those. I think of kind of particular note that I will mention, I am currently in a fellowship that is housed under family medicine. So if any of you guys kind of have like questions regarding applying for like PM&R spots versus family medicine spots, et cetera, because that can be very confusing. I can kind of help field those. So I will hand it off to maybe Mani if you want to go next. Sure. Thanks, Crystal. Thanks everyone for being here. My name is Mani Singh. Currently I'm at Columbia University. I'm one of the sports medicine faculty there. But before that I did, I'm from Texas originally, I grew up there, did all my medical training there, did my residency at Columbia, Cornell, PM&R residency through the joint program, and then went to Colorado where I met some of these fine folks on this panel for my sports fellowship. And we can talk about this a little bit more when we kind of go through a little bit more of the nitty gritty, but like Crystal, my fellowship is also housed under family medicine, but was a dedicated PM&R spot with dedicated PM&R faculty. So it was a little bit of a unique mixture. And then currently in my role kind of working with the sports medicine fellowship for Columbia, Cornell through NYP, if you guys have any questions at all about that. So maybe Mark, you want to go next? Yeah. So my name is Mark Hieronymus. I did medical school at the University of Kansas, and then I came out to Colorado where I did PM&R residency as well as fellowship in the same spot that Mani was in, and now I am on faculty. So my primary location is Denver Health, which is our county hospital, but then I'm on faculty at the University of Colorado, and then the APD for our sports medicine fellowship for the PM&R spot. So happy to talk from kind of that lens as well. Awesome. I'll leave it to Josh next. Want to go? Yeah. Thanks for having me tonight, Crystal. So great to see everybody here. So I'm originally from New Mexico. So I did my medical school and undergrad at the University of New Mexico, and then I came out to the Midwest. I came out to Minnesota where I did my PM&R residency at Mayo Clinic as well as my sports medicine fellowship here. And then I'm now on faculty in sports medicine at Mayo Clinic, and I'm the APD for the fellowship here. So again, happy to offer that lens. The fellowships I did was PM&R specific, and so I'm certainly happy to talk about that particular perspective as well. Cool. And last but not least, Christian. Hi, everyone. I'm Christian. I'm a fourth-year PM&R resident at the University of Colorado, and I will be the incoming sports fellow at CU. So it's the same fellowship that both Mark and Monty did. I am a Colorado guy, so they still haven't kicked me out of any of the training sites yet. I suppose there's always a first, so maybe next year they'll kick me out. But yeah, happy to answer any questions. Well, I'll get started with maybe a question, and then we can leave it to kind of the group here. So I'll kind of just pose, like, what activities did you guys feel were the most important to do in residency prior to applying for sports fellowship? I think for me to answer, I kind of had always heard the couple buckets of sports coverage research and leadership. But yeah, curious to hear the panel's thoughts here, too. I can't remember who told me this, but your application is telling a story. And I think that that story that you want to tell depends on what you ultimately want to do after fellowship, right? If you want more coverage versus if you want to be more research, if you want to be more clinical, your story should tell that kind of interest. And so, you know, kind of like Crystal mentioned, those big buckets that we talk about a lot, you know, research, leadership, academics, sports coverage, doesn't mean you have to fill every bucket 100% and have a perfect 100% application, right? You've got to fill the buckets with as much or as little as you're interested in, but then it should match the programs that you're applying to, right? If you apply to a fellowship that's really heavy in sports coverage, but your application shows no sports coverage, it'll be challenging for you to convince kind of the faculty or, you know, the group at that location that you truly want to do sports coverage, right? And so, I think stay true to yourself, you know, definitely we want to see interest, we want to see kind of a commitment over time, not just something that in your fourth year, all of a sudden there's a ton of sports activities coming up. But I'll pass it over to Josh to kind of add on to that. Yeah, I think, you know, I think that was very well said, Mani. Ultimately, I think that, you know, when I think about this from a philosophical point of view, it's very easy to try to mold yourself towards a particular program or what you think people want you to do. And ultimately, you want to be, you want to go to a fellowship and go to a place where you're supported to be the individual that you, that's most genuine to yourself. And so, again, if you, if you talk about that you really like coverage, or you really like ultrasound, or you really like women's health, but your application doesn't necessarily match that, then it's going to be hard, as Mani mentioned, to convince the people that are interviewing you that's genuine to who you actually want to be. And again, there's going to be fellowships that, for the most part, are fairly broad, but there's going to be fellowships that have particularly strong areas. And so, it's not uncommon for people to try to play up how they're interested in thing X, because that program emphasizes thing X. And so, ultimately, I think it's important to be genuine to yourself. I think, ultimately, too, if you're interested in academics, or maybe going to practice after having an application that supports that as well. So, if you're really interested in academics, you should have a track record of teaching or maybe giving presentations. And so, I think that that's another important piece. So, I think, ultimately, try to think less about who you need to be for a particular program and think about what person do you need to be that feels genuine to yourself and that helps you thrive. And so, I think that I would take a step back and reflect on what are your priorities and then kind of go from there. I just want to add to that, having just gone through the interview process and thinking about fellowship programs, I think what Josh said is super important. I think the difference between applying to fellowship and any other stage of our training so far is that you don't have to do a fellowship, right? It's a year that is not required for you to practice medicine. I guess that's technically true for residency, but in most cases, you're going to do a residency program. So, for this, you want to look at programs that match your interests. And I think that part of the application cycle is something that you haven't experienced yet until you apply for fellowship. And so, just be thoughtful about that. If a program is not a good fit for you, it may not be worth, you know, just forcing that fit instead of looking for a different type of program. What I would add to that is not just within the application of sideline research educational activities. I think thinking about EMGs and fluoro-guided procedures is another important lens that we have to think about. Some fellowships offer that. Some don't. And, like, some residency training programs give you way more experience in those things than others. So, you have to come back again to, like, what do you need to get out of fellowship to get the job that you want in the end? For me, I, like, knew, oh, I want to keep doing EMGs and I kind of want to keep doing lumbar fluoro, but I don't need to gain skills in that area. I just need to keep the skills I already got in residency, so what fellowship will let me do that so I'm getting it but not sacrificing my learning in sports medicine throughout the whole year. Yeah, those are some really awesome points, guys, so I appreciate you, appreciate all the input. Any questions from the group? Otherwise, I can elaborate a little bit more on my answer, but, again, I want to give you guys some time to ask any questions. Yeah, go ahead, Danny, it looks like. Hey, I'm Danny. I'm calling in from the University of Florida. The question I have, on the topic of family medicine-based sports programs, is there any public information available online on which programs have the capacity to take a PM&R resident or have continuity clinics for PM&R outside of just looking on their website and seeing if past residents have been PM&R trained prior to fellowship? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think my understanding of things is, again, kind of like looking at what you mentioned, looking at what past fellows that they've had. That being said, there are definitely some programs that have probably ranked PM&R applicants high and they just haven't happened to match them. So I think if there's a particular place that you have in mind, it's worthwhile to email usually the coordinator's email addresses on the website. That's going to be the best person to probably at least start by asking. I'll let anyone else chime in for that. I think there's also just some programs that are pretty well-known that accept PM&R, such as University of Iowa, for example. I can add to that, too, with the recent application cycle. One, I thought this was a really awkward thing to ask when I was at AMSSM. So if it feels awkward to you when you go up to these family medicine booths and things at the fellowship fair, it felt that way for me, too. So I would recommend look it up before because you'll never feel more silly than when you go up to someone like, I'm so happy that you take PM&R, and they're like, oh, we don't. That was a weird feeling. But a lot of times it's based off of the funding they have for each position. So it's not a personal thing against PM&R necessarily. But then what I did was for any area or program that I was interested in, I'd always look online first. And usually there's a blurb that says, we accept applicants from internal medicine, family medicine, PM&R, emergency. And then when you actually do the application on URAS, you'll see the little checkboxes of what you can apply or who can apply. So I didn't really ever have anywhere that I applied to that I felt like, am I actually able to apply to this program? It's usually pretty clear. Yeah, I'll speak to my program on this as well. And I feel like I'm a broken record. I've probably said this about 20 times now that I keep needing to ask my program director how they make this possible. But my continuity clinic at University of Iowa is actually urgent care. And I think that is in part because my spot is kind of paid for through the family medicine department. And then I believe how they kind of make it work is that I just work with some of the PM&R sports people each week. So that is something to kind of like clarify if that matters to you, what the specific continuity clinic is. And maybe that's something that each of the people on the panel could kind of relate because I know obviously a lot of the people there were at Colorado, so they can kind of speak to that. But I think, Josh, your continuity clinic was probably a little bit different experience than the rest of us. Yeah, I think the continuity clinic is actually a very important thing to think about because it's something you have to do weekly. So for us, our weekly continuity clinic is really, there's a musculoskeletal clinic that we have where we do primarily ultrasound guided injections. And so it's really just a procedure clinic. It's an additional procedure clinic. And so you're just getting, again, high volume and additional volume with ultrasound guided injections. And so that's your continuity clinic. There is some time in which we'll do like a regenerative medicine clinic. And so that's an additional opportunity that you have. But in general, it's very ultrasound focused, I'd say, and generally peripheral joint as well. Now, what you'll find is there's some continuity clinics that may, as Mark mentioned, may offer maybe like some EMG experience, maybe some more fluorobiotic injection experience. Some might actually have you cover inpatient. So there's certainly a wide variation of what it could be. But I do think that's important because one, it can either build or it can maintain skills you already have, and or you might end up doing some things that maybe you're not as passionate about. And so I think that's something that is important to think about. Just piggybacking off of Josh, you know, there's some programs that I remember when I was applying to that were based out of family medicine and had very few PNR faculty affiliated with the fellowship program. And what, you know, ends up happening sometimes then is, you know, if you're passionate about, you know, certain things and you don't want your continuity clinic to be different, then you want to find attendings that can match those skill sets, right? And so for example, there's a program that I remember that was based out of family medicine, their continuity clinic, they only had one Pumanar physician on faculty and that person was more kind of a general rehab physician that did some EMGs and nerve conduction studies. So by nature, because of the rules of kind of the ACGME fellowship, you ended up working with this Pumanar physician for EMGs as your continuity clinic rather than like an ultrasound or a procedure clinic or a floor or something like that, right? And so that's another advice I'd give you if you're looking at a non-Pumanar program is to look and see how many Pumanar faculty they have and what things those Pumanar faculty are doing. Awesome, I'll maybe throw in another question here, just something that I think I maybe like wish I would have known going in is I guess we've sort of touched on this, but finding the fellowship that fits you, this is your opportunity to find the program that you love and fellowship is much more of that process again, too, where they want people coming there that are gonna be a good fit. And so like you're interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing you. And I think, again, I think it'd be interesting to hear everyone on the panel's personal kind of experiences as to why they picked their particular fellowship. And I can kind of speak to that for myself and then maybe touch on like things I would have wished I would have thought about. So I ended up picking my particular fellowship partially because of location based on my partner, but I also, my kind of dream job would be to be like high level division one coverage team physician eventually. And so for me, that was important to have that experience during my fellowship. And I think also, obviously as PM&R physicians, we kind of get dug on for not having that primary care experience. And so for me, being in a program that was within family medicine where I would kind of brush up on some of those, primary care skills was important. And then I think lastly for me, like the diagnostic and procedural ultrasound piece was pretty important. I felt like I got a decent base during residency, but I definitely felt like I needed that kind of larger boost during fellowship. I think one thing I'll mention is, obviously I think as Mark had touched on, as PM&R sports physicians, oftentimes we will be asked if we will do any sort of spine or EMGs going forward. And so I will definitely say that like me not doing those during fellowship did limit some of my job options. That being said, I'm going to be ending up doing what I wanna do eventually in the future. I don't wanna do so much EMG and spine. So kind of a long-winded answer, but I think it might be interesting just kind of like hear each of everyone's perspectives as to why they maybe picked one program over the other, if that makes sense. Yeah. I can hop in. See, I think for me, it was a similar location issue. My wife was also matching into pulmonary fellowship the same year I was doing sports. So we were a little bound by that. But then I think when I was looking at programs overall to apply to, like I knew I wanted to stay in academics. So I wanted somewhere where I was gonna be able to teach residents and medical students and give lectures and do research. So that was really important to me. And then again, going back to like the EMGs and fluoro, I knew I wanted to keep those in my job. And so I wanted a place that was gonna allow me to do that. And then I kind of knew like, yeah, I really like ultrasound. I like joint and peripheral procedures, but I don't need kind of that extra level of like purple tunnel releases and ultrasound guided fasciotomies and things like that. So that wasn't like a must have for me in a fellowship. So again, I think it's just that balance of like, what kind of job do I want? What's gonna help me get that job? Yeah, I think my answer is similar, but different, right? It was, you know, I was in New York at the time, a lot of factors determined why I went to Colorado. Number one was I knew eventually that I would potentially wanna come back to New York, right? And so in my mind, there was diversity of training was a benefit. So set off intentionally trying to go to a different geographic region or a different program, because I thought that it would be one of the few times that maybe I would venture out. And, you know, one thing that I'm really glad that I did that for is because then you have developed now an entire network of different physicians, not just in PM&R, but in other specialties that you'll still run into and kind of have relationships with through sports medicine organizations moving forward. So that diversity in training was one reason. For me then kind of as Mark had mentioned earlier, it was, what do I want out of this year? And so I take a step back and I look at, well, what do I feel like I perceive as my weaknesses as a sports medicine physician? And in my PM&R residency training, I felt very comfortable with basic ultrasound procedures and diagnostic scans and things like that. But I didn't get as much urgent care or acute injury management expertise, right? And so fellowship picking intentional, the Colorado program had a month of urgent care at a ski resort, right? And so that checked that box because ultimately kind of as Crystal mentioned, I wanted to come back as an attending be a team physician, right? And I thought that having that skillset was gonna be valuable. So I think that would be something probably a really helpful exercise to do, right? Think about your dream job. Think about what skills that dream job entails. Look at what you feel comfortable doing. Theoretically coming straight out of residency, what could you do in August coming out of residency? And if you don't feel comfortable with the skill, find a program that is gonna kind of fill that gap for you. Yeah, I think that what you'll see is between all of us, there's a lot of similarities, but certainly a lot of differences as well. So I think for me, I think that in life, I try to simplify things as much as possible. And so for me, I try to think about what are my top three priorities? Number one for me was, I felt like I had a strong base ultrasound coming out of residency, but I wanted to keep building upon that because I wanted to kind of push my diagnostic skills to the next level. And I also wanted to build upon my procedural skills. So for me, I wanted to go to a place that was gonna offer a high-level training for both diagnostic ultrasound as well as interventional training. And so that was a priority for me. Second, I knew I wanted to be in academics after training. And so there was a chance for me to get some extra training as like a medical educator during fellowship, and then be able to capitalize on teaching a lot in fellowship and then getting high-level experience with research as well because I knew the system. And so I kept building my skills as an academician kind of during fellowship as well. And then finally, because I knew the system here, I knew that I could put myself in a situation to get a broad exposure to different sporting events and to a wide array of coverage. And so for me, knowing Crystal went to this at the beginning, but one of the knocks on PM&R has been our ability to cover and to be a well-rounded sports physician. And for me, I wanted to, while I do like ultrasound, I do wanna be a well-rounded sports physician. And so I intentionally tried to put myself in situations to build those skills. So that was really kind of the top three priorities for myself. And then I think the last thing is that I wanted to get good mentorship. I knew that I would get that here. And so I think that that's something that I've continued to benefit from. And so that was another priority for me as well. I'll try to add something new because I feel like I'm gonna echo a lot of what has already been said when I was making my decision, but I really did feel like of the places that I interviewed at, I would have been happy at every single one of them, but no, I'll say no program has like every perfect little thing the way exactly you wanted maybe, or at least in my opinion, it was like, oh, I love this about this program and this about this program. And so it goes back to just really focusing on what it is you wanna get out of fellowship for you. A couple of like logistical things that maybe this is not the right place to say them, but I think I wish I would have done differently. Like looking back as with the in-person interviews, I found it that like many of them were conflicting dates. So that was a lot harder. And so I think I would have probably applied to more programs just as that piece of information from a logistics standpoint. But other than that, like I feel like the process went perfectly for me in the sense that I ended up where I was supposed to end up, but would have been happy at any of the places I interviewed. So I think if you follow that, like what is it that you want to get out of fellowship mindset, you'll end up where you're supposed to end up. Yeah, I think I'll definitely emphasize some of the points that Josh made too. I loved where I was at for residency. I definitely considered staying there for fellowship. Obviously it was a great fellowship. We have three people here today that are either going or have been there. But I think for me, like I was frankly told by my residency program director to go somewhere else that it was gonna be good to kind of broaden my skillset to have a broader network, I suppose. And I think I've really seen that ring true. I mean, it's nice to kind of have now seen two different regions and multiple different physicians do things differently and then to be able to kind of choose which way that I like best. And I think for me also, as Josh had sort of mentioned, it was the mentorship piece. I kind of going into fellowship and still now, I'm going to be ending up in Chicago, but I'm not super regionally locked. And so I wanted to go to a place where I felt like I was gonna have great mentors that are well-connected that could help me kind of broaden my network even further going forward in the future. So I do agree that the mentorship piece of things is really important. And you'll find people along the interview trail that you connect with better than others and new people that are more well-known than others too. But I think that is something that's really kind of important to keep in mind. Any questions from the group yet? Yes. Yeah, Brandon, go ahead. Yeah, thank you guys for being here. I guess in your own personal experience, what were some, not red flags, but caution flags for when you were talking to a different programs or different people from different programs about ways that they could continue to meet what you guys were ultimately looking for in a job or in a fellowship? In order to help account for all of that because all of these programs, they have what they're trying to accomplish in a fellowship year, but you're also having your own specific goals as well. So how did you kind of help that match together if that makes sense? I mean, I think that there's maybe a few different ways to think about it. So for me, I think actually I use the pre-interview communication and the interview day communication as a big, that was helpful for me because I felt like if they were very organized with that, that I felt that they were, I was going to be in good hands with that program. There were some programs in which that was not the case and that kind of stood out to me as a negative thing. I also think that I appreciated, I felt like the faculty had read through my application and then had asked me specific things about it because you spend a lot of time in years to create a particular story, as Mani mentioned. And if somebody is not going to at least take the time to read through that or appreciate it, and that kind of stood out, then maybe I would just have questions about them investing me as a person long-term thereafter. And so that was something else. You know, I personally would ask, so you'll hear programs kind of talk about how much exposure they have to X, Y, or Z that could be procedures or scans or events. And I actually would, I would usually ask, like, can you give me objective numbers? So like over the last two or three years, like how many, like if they say they do a lot of injections, just for an example, like what's the typical fellow, like how many do they end up with at the end of the year or how many events are they covering by the end of the year? And I think that that helps me understand, like, okay, yes, number one, how that information they keep track of. And then number two, that they're like putting, there's no objective data behind what they're saying because kind of saying we do a lot of thing X, to them, maybe a lot is several, whereas to you, maybe it's a higher quantity. And so I think that that's something else I would just, I found helpful throughout the interview process. And so maybe we just kind of consider that moving forward. I would also say most websites will have where former graduates are now. It's like, it's not only like, are they doing, are their graduates doing what you want to do? So are you in an academic position where you're covering a collegiate D1 team, right? Like that will be pretty apparent on their websites. And I think that's helpful to know, like, can they actually get me to where I want to go? I think, you know, red flag wise, really, it was just kind of trusting your gut as far as your interactions with different people. Christian kind of alluded to this earlier, but this is going to be, you know, a different type of interview that you are going to do compared to interviews that you've done in the past in the sense that it should be a lot more, a little bit more informal. They should, you know, hopefully like Josh mentioned, I've read your applications, a smaller quantity of people going into sports medicine fellowships. And so the interactions that you have with different people, if they seem interested in you, if they seem like they've read your application and if they seem happy to be talking to you, right? Those are all things that you should really put a lot of stock in. There are a couple of programs where, you know, on paper, objectively, they were great. And then you leave the interview experience feeling, you know, I don't think that I connected with the people or I could tell that this person didn't read my application. And regardless of how good it was on paper, it moved lower on my list because, you know, the interviews that I remember were the interviews where it was really just like a conversation rather than like a Q&A type of thing. And so it was Zoom at the time when I was interviewing. So the in-person interactions that you'll have, you know, depending on the fellowship interviews, take a lot of stock in that, kind of similar to residency applications. And then I would also say that a lot of programs will speak to things maybe that have not happened yet, you know, saying like, hey, we're trying to develop this or hey, we're trying to implement this. And I think that's great because that shows that the program's trying to change, but I would just say, take it with a grain of salt because things that a program is trying to implement may happen the year that you're there or it may happen the year after you've already graduated. And so the more questions you can ask and the more objective data you can get for things that maybe are not concrete or solidified, that will help you avoid any things where you show up and you're like, oh, I thought this was gonna be my experience and this is not the case. I guess we're playing chicken, Crystal. I would say I really agree with the idea of just trust your gut for some of these red flags. I think, especially the in-person ones, you just feel something's a little off when it's just not a good fit. And it might not be a red flag for another candidate, but it just doesn't ring true to what you want to do. So trust your gut. I relied a lot on people that went through the process before me, so literally everybody on this call, except I met Josh during the interview process, but everybody else I reached out to at some point was like, hey, I had this experience here. What was your experience? And just tried to bounce some ideas off them. So rely on your mentors, rely on your peers who've gone through the process, because they can help kind of tell you like, yeah, that is a little bit weird, but that was your experience. Or I wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't have liked that when I was interviewing either. So it just normalizes it a bit for you. I'm trying to think of like overt red flags that I came across during the interview season. And I don't really have like a memorable experience. There were some softer, like yellow flags of like, fellows wouldn't tell me like, how many hours they were working every week and like, yeah, it's usually fine, like how many hours I'm working. And so like, things like that made me a little nervous that they were probably putting in some fair amount of time, but I didn't think that was probably all I experienced. Yeah, I would say I mean, during all of these interview processes, you'll get a fair amount of time, like one on one or just with the fellows. So I think that's a good opportunity to try and get and get questions answered as transparently as possible. You know, I think asking questions like, you know, how, like, what and when are the training rooms? Are you, you know, going to clinic every day? And then after that, going to training room every night? Are you, you know, how much coverage are you doing on the weekends? Like, do you, you know, very often get weekends off, you know, to kind of just depending on how much that coverage is important to you, I think also, you know, asking, are you going to be the only person covering many times or is there going to also be an ortho fellow there or an orthopedic surgeon there? I kind of think what else I think, you know, one thing for me that was kind of a surprise and has been, you know, probably a more of a pro than a con, but my, you know, clinics at IEL, we have a ton of learners. So, you know, it's it is unless it's a procedure clinic, it's never just one on one me and an attending. So there's many times residents, athletic trainers that we're kind of sharing and attending this clinic, which is nice. It's, you know, it ends up being very learner focused. I don't see quite as many patients, but, you know, it kind of just depends on, you know, what you want or like in that way versus, you know, I think other clinics you're going to be, you know, very much needed to be in that clinic as a fellow. So just kind of asking, like, what the focus is from the fellow standpoint, is it more from, you know, learning versus like a service piece of things, if that makes sense, you know, somewhat similar to what you guys probably looked for in residency. I think like, you know, most programs, it doesn't seem that you cover inpatient services, although I know there is one where they have some call and some inpatient coverage. So it might be something worth asking about if that's something that's important or not to you. Those would be the big things that kind of come to mind for me. So, yeah. What other questions do you guys have? Hi, I actually have a question that was kind of touched on a little bit already. I'll put my video on. Kind of touched on a little bit already, and I was really just going to ask what the difference is between like the fellowship interview and the residency interview. Just I know that, you know, it's a smaller group of people, it's like a little more specialized. So I know that's kind of like a different approach of how to approach the interview. So I just kind of want to get your opinions on that. I think the biggest difference is in a fellowship interview, the fellowship side, you're really looking at like, can these be a future faculty member here? Right. It's like a year long interview fellowship is. Right. And so I really think you're trying to get to know the person and like, hey, is this someone I would enjoy working with? Is this someone that I think that would be good for our faculty? Can they bring something unique that we don't currently offer versus residency is a little different. It's, you know, not quite as near peer, I will call it to the people you're interviewing with. So I think that because of that, it becomes a lot more casual in the actual interview because, again, like if you're only interviewing 10 people for a fellowship spot, like you, if you made it into that top 10, they know you're qualified. Right. In terms of your coverage and your research and leadership and whatever else. So then it's just are we can we offer what you need and do you offer what we need back? Yeah, I was going to say something very similar that interviews for a fellowship felt much more like, is this a good fit for both of us than it did, like, are you meeting the criteria we need for you to get a spot here? Whereas like in residency, it feels much more like that checklist of like, can you be a good resident? Things felt more casual. There was less like I only had one like weird interview question that felt a little more contenty, but everything else was more like looking at your application and talking about why you did what you did and why it was meaningful to you. So I think one key that I would highlight is like, don't put things on your application that like you don't feel comfortable talking about because it's a small group of people. You're going to get asked about almost everything on your application and be able to talk about why it's important. So I think it's much more conversational, much more laid back and much more of like feeling each other out for the fit than anything else. And I think I think the question that I got the most during fellowship interviews was like, what do you see your job being or your practice being in five years? And it was very much kind of like they alluded to, can you can we offer what you want to do? Is this a good fit? Right. And so I would say go into each fellowship interview with that in mind. Think about what do I want to do in five years? What in this fellowship specifically is going to help me meet that goal? Right. So if you interview at a program that has a ton of academic opportunities and you want to be an academic physiatrist in sports medicine in five years, that's great. Right. You talk to that. You they're they're trying to hear that, hey, this is going to be a great fit if I come here for a year. And I would say the other thing that, you know, it goes it's a two way street. But the other thing that fellowship faculty are looking at is do I want to spend a year with this person? Right. And so, you know, everyone is going to be everyone that's going to get that interview is going to be really, really well qualified. Right. And then it ultimately is going to come down not just to content match as far as can I get what I want in an academic setting, but are we matching as human beings and people? Right. You know, there's different people, different personalities. And so that's why I say it's a two way street. You should also be asking that question whenever you're being interviewed because you're going to spend a lot of time with these people. You're going to spend, you know, maybe once a week for 52 weeks, something like that. Right. It's a lot of time to spend with one person over a year. So just keep that in mind, too, is is it a good fit? Yeah, I think, you know, you'll still get a lot of the same like questions you probably got for residency, but as applied to sports, so like why sports medicine, why this specific program and kind of like as as you guys, the rest of you guys already mentioned, like, what do you see your job looking like in the future? So those would be kind of like the ones I would, you know, absolutely make sure that you prep and like do a little bit of research as to like what specifically certain programs offer. So like for me and the program that I wanted to go to, again, it was like kind of a high level coverage and ultrasound piece of things. But certainly, you know, other programs, there were different desires that I that I liked about theirs or things that I liked about theirs. But, yeah, you'll find it ends up just being like quite a bit more of a mix of things. It ends up being like quite a bit more casual, like I think, you know, there's a lot of places that will have like, you know, one or two like form questions that they're asking everyone first and then they'll just sort of like open it up and say, well, what questions do you have or like tell me a little bit more about yourself? And it was definitely a lot kind of like lower, lower pressure, I would say, than residency, which was nice. So, yeah. What other questions do you guys might have? Otherwise, I can pose one or two more for you guys. Yeah, Antonio. Thank you for having us today. I have a question regarding the scheduling of interviews and kind of navigating any conflicts of interest. It seems like there's pretty limited days. So, you know, as you kind of come through on a rolling basis. So how did you guys navigate that? If you know you take an interview, then another one comes through and deciding what you're going to do and then also how to reach out to programs if you know there's something that you have to change. Yeah, I thought this was like surprisingly very difficult this last application season for me, and it was mainly that it just felt like so many of them had limited spots that were on the same days. And so you had to make some tough decisions. And there are programs that I really, really wish I could have interviewed at and only didn't interview because they just conflicted with another. And sometimes the decision was like, both of these programs would be a great fit for me. One is a cheaper flight than the other. And that's literally sometimes how I had to make that decision when it was that type of a call. I think the key is like if you accept an interview and then ultimately later on decide not to take it, just give them as much notice as possible and just say, like, I'm so sorry, like, I won't be able to be making this interview, be very professional about it because it's a small world and you don't want to just like leave them hanging the day before the interview. So I think everybody understands that this process is, you know, feeling out kind of the right applicants. So if ultimately you decide, like, that's not the place that I'm going to interview with this conflict, do they understand that it wasn't going to be the right fit either? So just give them enough time. And I think they're totally understanding that. Yeah, I'd agree with Christian on that one. I think, like, definitely giving people as much of a heads up as possible, I mean, there were definitely a few that I, you know, accepted interview and then ended up getting other ones that I was more excited about and just said, hey, sorry, I, you know, I'm just not able to make this anymore. And they're totally, you know, fine about that as long as you're professional with it. I think I, if I recall correctly, had a few times where, you know, I had to make a decision I think I recall correctly, had a few times where, you know, say I would get an interview from place A and they gave me two dates and I chose one date and then I got another email like a week later that I could only do the date that I'd already agreed to on the other place. Like, I would email place A and say, like, hey, do you have any open slots on the other date that you guys offered still? And so, like, just trying to do that, like, little bit of, like, planning, coordination piece of things. And it's like, there's no harm in asking if, like, if you can switch the date and, like, the worst they're going to say is, no, that day is full or, oh, we'll let you know. But it did take, like, yeah, some, like, a little bit of, like, planning, planning piece of things. And I definitely had, like, a calendar for things. And I, you know, I think I got lucky for a couple of them in that, like, regionally it just worked out. Like, I, you know, interviewed, for example, at Mayo and then I had Iowa the following day, which was awesome. So, I could kind of just drive there. So, like, trying to chunk those together as much as possible, although that can, you know, be tough because obviously there's not a lot of sports places. So, you're going to be applying, you know, pretty broadly. So, so, yeah, it is a little bit of a, a little bit of a challenge, though. And you may, you know, just have to kind of, like, pick and choose for some of the spots. So, hopefully that makes sense. I think some, some programs also on their websites have already dates listed or maybe anticipated, you know, we're going to interview on day A and day B, or, hey, we're going to interview on day A. So, there's programs you're really interested in. Take a look at the websites a little bit earlier and try to kind of make a calendar for yourself. And then I think also, like, a historical perspective, talk to people above you. You know, if you're able to, you can even, if you're really passionate about a program, you can email a program coordinator and say, hey, what days last year did you guys interview on? So, you can kind of get a sense of, you know, most of the time it's going to depend on when all the faculty are available for an interview, so it might change. But certain programs are, like, known for interviewing on the same, you know, time of year over and over again. What else? Any other questions from the group here? Yeah, Josh, go ahead. Well, I guess more than a question, I guess I just have a few other considerations or things to maybe think about as we go through this process. Just bear with me through just a few different things here. We're going to go back to that mentorship. One thing I would encourage you to think about would be, is there formal check-in time with your APD or with your PD as you go through the year? I think that clinic typically gets busy, training room gets busy, and so it's nice to sometimes have a dedicated check-in time just to see how you're doing as a person and how you're doing as a fellow, so I would ask about that. I also think that asking about, is there progressive autonomy? That could look like, for example, how do they implement progressive autonomy throughout the year in terms of the attending's clinic, or do you have the opportunity to run your own clinic? There are some fellowships in which you will have an individual continuity clinic in which as the year goes on, you're able to do your own clinic by itself. That helps you go from that transition to a trainee to then an attending. That's something else that I would at least inquire about to see if they have that in place or not, and then what's their implementation of progressive autonomy? I would also potentially think about a curriculum or didactics. Sometimes people will have you teach like residents or teach other people, and I think that just understanding what is the curriculum. If they say they offer a coverage curriculum or a coverage bootcamp or an ultrasound curriculum, what does that exactly mean and what does that look like? I think that that's something else to think about. I also think that, as Monty mentioned earlier, there's a lot of programs that will say that we have thing X that we're really good at, but we're really working on thing Y. Ultimately, whenever you have thing Y that's being worked on, typically that's not an experience that's for the most part built into the daily schedule, and what you do daily you're gonna get much better at. So while there might be things that people are working at, think about what you're gonna be exposed to most commonly and day to day, and that's probably the skills you're gonna get probably the best at. And so I would really focus on that aspect of things. Again, when you think about coverage or procedures, I would try to be as very granular as to what exactly does that mean, in which for procedures, how many are you particularly doing versus watching somebody else? That's very different to watch somebody drive versus drive the car yourself. And so I think that that's something I would really inquire about. And same thing for coverage too, are you making the independent decisions for athletes or are you watching somebody else make the decisions? And then the coverage, I would think about which levels do you have exposed to and what's required? So if you have a particular interest in a particular sport, and that's not something that's required, do you have the opportunity to then get more exposure in that particular coverage? So if you wanna be the team doc for U.S. soccer, but you don't get a lot of soccer coverage, do you have opportunities to then get coverage or get more exposure to that with time? So those are just some other tidbits I wanted to at least bring up at some point. Yeah, I think that's a really important point about the required versus optional coverage. I think you'll find that there's a really wide range of like how much is required versus not. Like for me at University of Iowa, there's quite a bit that is recovered or sorry, required. That being said, like I, as Josh mentioned, I personally had a volleyball interest. So I was able to do a little bit less of the required sports during the fall in order to supplement there. So like how flexible are they willing to kind of be with your passions? So yeah, that was kind of the main point I had there. Holly, did you have a question? Or maybe just a thumbs up. Okay. Any other like thoughts, like pieces, kind of last pieces of advice here? I know we can kind of technically go until 7.15, but want to kind of respect everyone's time here. But yeah, Danny, go ahead. I'm sorry for asking another question here. I have another like nitty gritty ERAS question about the experiences section. Does the panel have any recommendations on whether you have more than 10 experiences, like how to group them and which particular experiences you feel are worth just isolating that one to talk about in that one section and kind of just grouping other ones together. And sorry, it's like a three part question. Do you feel like undergraduate experiences, if it's like simply volunteering at like a race and handing out water is worth mentioning in your application? And for the experiences section in general, would you prefer like a bullet points type quick, like notes on like what you did, or would like a conclusive paragraph on what you did be better? Yeah. I personally like the bullet points for some things, right? Like if you've given a lot of lectures to other residents or medical students, you don't need to make those like, I think a bullet point for that is perfect. Same thing with sideline coverage, because you're gonna have a lot of different, hopefully a lot of different experiences with that. And it's just a lot easier for me to read and synthesize. And getting back to what Josh has said, you can be very granular in that too, right? Like I covered five games, I covered 60 hours, whatever it may be for all these different things. And I think that's really helpful for us. So I think that's one part for that. I think what to group, I think those are the easy things, right? Like, oh, I can see you've done a lot of educational topics and talks. I think that's a great thing to group into one thing. But let's say there was some experience that you had, like a first author research paper where you did the IRB all the way through the end to getting it published in British Journal of Sports Medicine, whatever it may be. Like that's a really cool single thing that you wanna highlight, right? So I wouldn't bury that in like, oh, I did a couple of case posters as well, right? So I think it's just like, what do you wanna highlight and what is okay being kind of a, oh, look, I did all of these things, but none of them by themselves were super kind of powerful. Yeah, I would definitely agree. I think I was the first year where they had the 10 experiences. So it's very overwhelming to know how to figure that out, but definitely chunking together the coverage experiences sort of in the way that Mark had mentioned. And I did it in a bullet point format and just kind of listed as like, primary medical coverage, et cetera. And I also got pretty granular with things and would say like three games versus an entire season where I was the primary physician. That being said, I had this like veteran sports camp that it was like a whole week long experience so that I kind of chunked out on its own because I was able to kind of like write a little bit more meaningfully about that. So I know that's not like a perfect answer, but I think definitely like chunking together like sports coverage. I think I chunked together like current research endeavors that maybe I hadn't, didn't have like a final product on. Trying to think of anything else I kind of like grouped together. Those were the main ones that I can remember. I don't know if Christian, since you just did it, if you have any insight. Yeah, I can't, it's three, I think, they let you do for most meaningful. And so I did something similar to what Crystal did. I got to do this like veteran sports camp and then I also got to do rotation at the Olympic Training Center. And I had done one, but not the other. So I actually put them both together as like unique coverage opportunity kind of thing in addition to my other coverage. And then spoke about like the process of being selected for them and why they were gonna be meaningful. So I think sometimes those, the stuff that you're doing that you really want to like make sure they see, I would make into one of your meaningful experiences so you can elaborate more. So for example, other things that I highlighted were like my role as a chief. So I got to talk about all the things I did as a chief. I got to talk about those two sports coverage. I'm blanking, I think education was my other one. So I talked about like medical student education and those things and why they were so meaningful to me. And I think when you have those objects that you wanna talk more about as your meaningful experiences, they'll ask you more about them on your interviews too. So I felt like those were the high yield ones that people were talking to me about. And then in regards to your question about like undergrad, I personally didn't include anything from undergrad with the exception of like, I put like I was a college soccer player and that was about it. So I don't think that's as meaningful. So hopefully you've had a little more exposure to like the physician side of the sideline coverage now. I'm sorry to highlight those things. Yeah, I guess one counterpoint would be, I think the undergrad component, I think ultimately rather than thinking about in terms of timeline, like what's happened, undergrad, medical school, residency, fellowship, I think ultimately probably the latter portions are probably gonna be more highly emphasized, but ultimately if there's something that occurred at some point in your life that's very meaningful you can speak to, I think that's helpful. But I think ultimately, hopefully there are some other experiences that have come recently that you can speak to, but if something was substantial that happened at point X in your life, I think that's reasonable to talk about. But again, it all comes down to the fact that there's only so much to highlight. And so you wanna be very intentional with what you do or do not highlight. Yeah, I think it just all comes back to what story are you trying to tell? Like, oh, if you were an athletic trainer in undergrad, I think that's very different than if you were an athlete. If you were an athletic trainer in undergrad, I think that's very different than a liberal arts degree in biological chemistry, right? Like no one cares about that. So it just, yeah, it's what kind of story are you trying to tell of how you got to this place? Yeah, I'd agree if there's like, certainly if there's something that's super duper sports and medicine related, like Mark mentioned, like if you were a former athletic trainer or physical therapist, or you led some sort of sporting event in undergrad, that could definitely be worthwhile to put on there. But if it's like, you volunteered at a, whatever you say it, but it's not related to sports medicine, it's probably not really worth putting on the application cause you have like pretty limited space, so. And I think one last thing about the experiences would be this is, the goal is not to make the list as long as possible. You know, the goal is not to make this, just bloat this as long as possible because people can kind of read through that. And ultimately we're coming, we're trying to focus on quality over quantity to some degree. Obviously we want several experiences, but you know, the goal is not to say, I was at this race for five minutes, handed off, handed out one water bottle, then I'm putting this on my application. I mean, you probably can't speak to that really in depth. And so it's much more, at least I should say it's personally, it's a little more interesting to say, you know, I covered this event, this race, and I learned this from it, then, you know, I was minimally involved in three races, for example. So I think don't, the goal is not to just list as many things as possible either. Any other questions from the group here? I think these were all great questions. I appreciate you guys' participation here. I'll maybe give you guys like 10, 20 more seconds. And then if any other like thoughts from the panel too, and then I'm going to put my email address into the chat. Anyone else can as well. And then I'll give it a little bit of time here for questions, but feel free to email me. I can connect you with anyone on this panel too. I'm always happy to answer questions about this process because it can be very nerve wracking and scary, but also very exciting. So. My last plug will be the NRMP has a program directors survey, it's kind of older data, it's from 2016, but I think it's probably not significantly changed that will kind of give you a little more information on what programs are looking for. So you can always Google that. Yeah. Thanks for all joining excited that you guys are all choosing sports medicine it's the best part of PM&R. Awesome. Thanks everyone for coming. So we'll wrap up here it looks like everyone put their email address in the chat here so we'll leave that up for a little bit and otherwise have a good night and good luck with the process and reach out anytime. Appreciate all your time and organizing this. Yeah, yeah. Thank you guys.

sports medicine

fellowship application

career goals

ERAS application

interview scheduling

professionalism

mentorship

career trajectory

program strengths

mutual fit