My Dance Injury Needs to be Seen by a Doctor. What Type of Doctor should I See?

So, you’ve decided that you need to see a physician for your dance injury (or your injury that’s affecting your ability to dance). Here are some things to keep in mind.  There are a few options for selecting a type of physician to see for your dance-related injury:

• Your family practice physician/primary care provider
• A sports medicine physician
• An orthopedic surgeon (sports medicine and orthopedics may be in the same clinic or department)

Sports Medicine Physician

Frequently, sports medicine doctors offer some distinct advantages over other options for diagnosing, treating, and recovering from dance-related injuries.

1. They may be more likely to allow you to continue dancing to some extent while your injury heals (if your injury will allow it), as opposed to telling you to completely stop dancing for 4, 6, or 8 weeks. The patients who see sports medicine physicians are all athletic individuals who are working to return to their sport or activity as quickly and safely as possible.
2. Sports medicine physicians are trained and experienced in treating athletic injuries. This means that they are better equipped to properly diagnose and treat your injury. But most importantly, this means that they understand the proper way to return to activities a little better than non-sports medicine physicians.
3. These physicians diagnose and treat athletic injuries on a daily basis, and, as a result, they stay current with the latest injury-related research for diagnostic tests, injury treatment, and proper recovery and rehabilitation from injuries for an athletic patient. This means that you will be much more likely to get a customized plan of care.

However, some medical insurance companies require you to have a referral before you can see a sports medicine physician, so make sure that you check your insurance before making your appointment.

Orthopedic Surgeon

Another option available to you is often very similar to going to a sports medicine clinic or department – getting an appointment with an orthopedic clinic. At many medical facilities, the two actually share a facility.

Orthopedic surgeons are an excellent choice if you need a cast or surgery (no duh), but if you have a sprain, a strain, tendinitis, or other soft tissue injury, you may be better off going to a sports medicine physician for the reasons listed above (more experience/familiarity with overuse injuries, more likely to let you keep dancing).

Additionally, many orthopedic clinics are booked pretty far out (meaning there will be a longer time between when you call for an appointment and when your appointment actually happens) because they are the ones that do the follow-up appointments for the people who go to the ER with a fracture. Also, their patient population is not limited to those participating in sports or activities, like it might be at a sports medicine clinic. This means that there may be a much higher demand for the appointments in the orthopedic clinic than there would be at a sports medicine clinic (even though the supply may be the same at each place). Another factor that limits the number of appointments with an orthopedist that may be available to you is that surgery requires several follow-up appointments. But I’m not having surgery, so why does this matter to me? With more patients needing multiple follow-up appointments, more of your doctor’s schedule will be reserved for follow-up appointments as opposed to new patient appointments.

Primary Care Provider (PCP)

PCPs, also referred to as Family Practice Doctors or General Practitioners (GPs), are great physicians to go to for your annual check-up, having them figure out what random illness you’ve picked up from the neighborhood 5-year-olds (aka walking germ distributors), and making sure all of your systems (circulatory, respiratory, nervous) are working properly. However, their program’s focus in school is to prepare them to recognize every possible illness or systemic disease that they simply don’t have the time to get all of the training they need to help guide you through the injury rehab process or the proper steps to take to return to dancing after an injury. In fact, most PCPs will even tell you this.

If someone with a chronic musculoskeletal injury sees a PCP, he or she is likely to be given a treatment plan of rest, ice, and follow-up as needed. This is because this plan works if your goal is to get your pain to go away! However, chances are that you want to continue dancing as much as you’re able while recovering from injury and that you’d like to get better physically, too (not just have your pain go away). So, you may need to go to a more experienced medical professional who better understands the injury rehabilitation that you need to go through.




Don’t think that you need to go see a “dance doctor” every time you are injured. Outside of the most densely populated cities with very large performing arts communities, most “dance doctors” are orthopedic surgeons who have had previous experience working with dancers and other athletes, but, typically, they are minimally affiliated with the local ballet/dance company. If you have a minor injury that is not seriously restricting your dancing ability (contusion, tendinitis), you most likely do not need to go see the doctor with dance experience.

As is the case with most things, the previous statements are generalities.  There are going to be exceptions to the “rule”.

A note: I am a sports medicine professional, so I may be biased in favor of physicians with sports medicine training. However, as a sports medicine professional, I have collaborated with many different kinds of medical professionals with a wide range of amount of experience with sports medicine, which has demonstrated to me the differences between various types of physicians and how they diagnose, treat, and otherwise handle musculoskeletal injuries in an athletic population. Lastly, I have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of sports medicine clinics and orthopedic clinics functioning as a part of a larger medical organization.