OT and Sports Medicine

[pharmstudent993]

Hey all,
Out of curiosity, I was wondering if any OTs work in the field of sports medicine. If so, what exactly do they do in a typical day of work and in what environment would they typically work in (hospital, out-patient clinic, etc.)? Thank you all for your replies in advance.

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[amanda09]

Hi,

In my opinion, I think PT's would be more likely to work in the area of sports medicine, however, if the persons injury interferes with their ADL's, OT's are likely to be involved. On an outpatient basis, I think OT's would see a lot more sports injuries than in the inpatient setting. Hope this helped..I'm not really familiar with sports medicine but would guess PT's would be more involved in the actual sports medicine area.

 

[superCOTA]

If there was an issue distal to the wrist, someone w/ hand experience may be called in, which leans towards OT the most, although it still falls under PT's scope of practice. A better clinic will have someone with some serious experience, maybe with the Certified Hand Therapist title in their name wether they are OT or PT.

If someone plays sports and will realistically continue to play sports, and they are in outpatient, they are probably younger and capable of getting dressed and taking care of most hygiene matters - so OT's are few in these places.

But while we are talking about sports... there are a lot of sports clinics arent there? Just like there are a lot of SUV's that never see a mountain... these are merely outpaitent rehab settings, and sure as PT's want to write their own scripts to improve productivity.... many of these places are 'mills' where some regular joe who tore an ACL on the slopes is put on a machine and left alone for 30 minutes, 2-3x/wk, and joe figures that if he's in a "sports clinic" he is getting the same caliber of care as the pros...