Dr. Daniel Clearfield is a Family Medicine trained physician who specializes in Sports Medicine. Listen to how he got into the field and what he loves about it.
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Listen to The Premed Years Podcast Session 273, especially if you still have some questions about osteopathic medicine. Dr. Daniel Clearfield is a family sports medicine physician who's been out of training now for seven years. He used to be in Academics nut now is in Private Practice. He's going to talk about his specialty with us today.
Daniel found Kinesiology as a major in college during his Sophomore year. He started studying mechanical engineering but didn't like it. Then he started doing Kinesiology and just loved it. At that time, he was already a personal trainor and learning about the anatomy and biomechanics exercise and physiology. Trying to figure out how he can continue with it, he found there were different paths you can take. A lot of people in his major ended up becoming coaches or personal trainors. Others started looking into physical therapy as well as other paths until he found primary care sports medicine as something that appealed to him the most during externship. Although he was open-minded to other specialties, it was still something he was passionate about and it was what he ended up doing still.
"It was like that whole scope of family medicine where you can see from cradle to grave. You're not really limited as to what you can see or do."
Daniel did consider different specialties but what really drew him to sports medicine is the fact was being able to see patients of all ages. Plus, the fact that you're not limited to what you can see or do. In some sense, you will have a limited scope. That being said, Daniel says primary care sports medicine allowed him to delve into all of the different things that can involve a family doctor they might see from a broad scope of things, and focusing more into the sports/ movement aspect. Daniel also shares that one of the things he sees a lot of physicians suffer burnout from is noncompliance of patients, who are just apathetic about doing things to better themselves.
"One of the things he sees a lot of physicians suffer burnout from is noncompliance of patients."
Daniel says that you have to be a personable as you'll be seeing a wide range of patients. And although you don't have to be an athlete to be a sports medicine doctor, it helps. Daniel's main sport in high school was wrestling. He has also done football and other different sports. He experienced suffering from a lot of sports injuries so he's able to empathize more with his clients.
"Being an athlete, having that mindset, that definitely is something that helps in sports medicine. Anybody who was an athlete gets that mentality and is able to better connect with their patients."
In fact, Daniel recently attended the annual sports medicine conference and he saw that everybody was in great shape.
"I tell people I'm