Upper Extremity Fellowship Program
As a young orthopedic practice, The Jackson Clinics (TJC) has prioritized Clinical Care and Education as our highest priorities for our staff. As a result, we developed a clinical career path that covers a spectrum of education from clinical internships through our APTA Credentialed Orthopedic Residency Program. With 5 years of residency alumni in our company, we needed to create a “next step” in the clinical progression. An APTA credentialed Fellowship Program is what we decided to do.
We chose the Upper Extremity Athlete Fellowship based on a needs assessment of the region we practice in. Physicians gave us feedback that they do not know of expert physical therapists in their referral region who have explicit knowledge of extremely complex shoulder and elbow conditions. They reached out to TJC and asked if we could train some of our staff members to fulfill the need. We saw the Upper Extremity Athlete Fellowship as an opportunity to meet their need, while advancing our clinical career path at the same time.
The program curriculum we have designed is intended to meet and exceed the criteria laid out in the DSSP for the Upper Extremity Athlete Fellowship. We have chosen to significantly bolster the physician mentorship and collaboration component, as we feel it is critical to understand the decision making, progression criteria, and risk management that our referral sources expect when they trust us with their complex patients.
Our fellows will have extensive didactic training using multiple learning models and information resources. Additionally, we will provide opportunities for them to attend both medical and physical therapy specialty conferences on the shoulder and elbow at no cost to them. We feel strongly that our fellows will learn best by integrating the information they learn into clinical practice. Simply stated, the more shoulder and elbow patients they see, the better they will get.
Our fellows will be teachers and mentors both during and after the program. Our residency program offers multiple avenues for high level mentorship, lecture, and practical skill building teaching opportunities, and we will expect our fellows to participate in all three. Again, we feel that learning happens while teaching and we want our fellows to spread their knowledge to others in TJC.
