Comprehensive Evaluation of Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship Websites

Robert Pagan-Rosado; Mark Friedrich Hurdle; Claudia Jimenez; Andrea Cheville; Raul A Rosario-Concepcion

doi:10.1177/23821205211028346

Comprehensive Evaluation of Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship Websites

J Med Educ Curric Dev. 2021 Jul 16:8:23821205211028346. doi: 10.1177/23821205211028346. eCollection 2021 Jan-Dec.

Authors

Robert Pagan-Rosado¹, Mark Friedrich Hurdle², Claudia Jimenez³, Andrea Cheville¹, Raul A Rosario-Concepcion⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.
² Department of Pain Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL, USA.
³ Department of Physical Medicine, Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine, University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
⁴ Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL, USA.

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the comprehensiveness of primary care sports medicine fellowship websites and identify potential areas of improvement.

Design: Cross-sectional analysis of fellowship program websites using quantitative and descriptive statistics.

Setting: Internet.

Participants: A total of 192 primary care sports medicine fellowship websites listed on the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) website.

Independent variables: Program Specialty and Program Region.

Main outcome measures: The presence or absence of 19 predetermined criteria on primary care sports medicine fellowship websites.

Results: The average number of criteria that was included on each website was 9.8 (SD 3.5) (51.6%) of the possible 19. Programs had as few as 2 of the 19 (10.5%) criteria included on their website, and others had as many as 17 of the 19 (89.4%) criteria. Of the 192 primary care sports medicine fellowships, only 5 (2.6%) addressed at least 80% of the 19 different criteria. No primary care sports medicine fellowship website included all 19 criteria.

Conclusions: Most primary care sports medicine fellowship websites do not offer comprehensive information about their programs for prospective applicants.

Keywords: Applicant; ERAS; PM&R; education; family medicine; virtual.