Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about three tips for finding a local expert on running injuries.
Look, if you get injured, you’re going to need help and if you want to maintain your running fitness and you really want to get back to running as quickly as possible, sometimes you’ve got to talk to an expert. Now, I’m an expert on running entries. I do telemedicine visits, but telemedicine does not work for everything or everybody.
In some states, I just can’t help you. I’m licensed in California. I’m licensed in Texas. I can help a lot of people overseas, but if you’re in one of those states that has really restrictive telemedicine laws, I actually might not be able to help you.
If you need a procedure like a PRP injection or you need an ingrown toenail removed, well, you need an expert, preferably a local expert who you can see and somebody who really understands and likes working with runners. So the tip here is that, what can you do? I get calls, believe it or not, every day from people all over the country, Baltimore, New York, Ohio, Texas, in remote areas, wanting me to see them locally. And I can’t do that obviously. I can’t see people everywhere in person and in some states I can’t even help them with telemedicine.
They’ll say, “Well, who can I see like you?” And so I got one of these calls recently from somebody in Baltimore and I don’t work with patients in Baltimore, but I know there are lots of experts there. In fact, there are experts in every city in America. So you can always find somebody who can help you, particularly if you know that you need a procedure like a PRP injection or a corticosteroid injection or an ingrown toenail removal or something else.
So here’s how to go about that. I was explaining this to this woman, saying, “Look, there is a way you can find an expert. You don’t have to talk to me. You can find somebody else.” And there’s several ways to figure out whether or not that might be a good person. The fact is when I lecture at conferences and I teach physicians about running injuries, some doctors really like working with runners, but most of them truthfully do not.
Why? Well, simple. Runners ask lots of questions and runners make it harder for the doctor. If you come in and you have a stress fracture and you’re not an athlete, and we tell you to just sit still and stay off of your foot for six weeks, most people who are not athletic really don’t protest that much.
But when you’re training for a marathon and you get a stress fracture and you’ve been training for six months consistently, and some doctor says, “Oh, well just take some time off. Just take about three months off and see what happens.” You come unglued. And the doctors don’t like that. It slows them down. It’s troublesome. It’s anxiety provoking, and they don’t like it. So that’s the first thing is you’ve got to try to find somebody who is a running expert who actually likes working with runners.
Most people who focus on running injuries like working with runners. They’ve written stuff about running injuries. I’ve written a book on running injuries. I have published lots of stuff on running injuries. I do a podcast on running injuries. And if you find somebody locally that does any of those things, then that’s going to be helpful. Barring that, there is another trick that can help.
What I often do is I tell people, “Okay, go to the website, somebody who’s near you. Just start there.” Find a group that has several doctors, several different podiatrists, and look at the doctors where it usually says about us or staff or something like that. Click on the individual doctors, and they’ll usually have a bio that they’ve written that says what they like about their practice, what kind of patients they prefer to see, what areas of particular expertise they have.
Then down at the bottom, almost all of them have a paragraph that’s sort of a little personal thing that says doctor has a dog and three kids or something and enjoys running or shares that running is their passion. Well, somebody who is a runner, first of all, is going to be a lot more likely to be in your corner and actually help you figure out how to get back to running as quickly as possible. So if you can’t find somebody who lectures about running injuries or who’s written a book on running injuries or something like that, at least look for somebody who shares in their personal bio that they really do like to run. And if they run competitively, all the better.
So that’s an easy trick. Just go to the websites for the people around you and see if you can’t find somebody who’s an expert. Barring that, then look for somebody in a wider circle where you might do a telemedicine visit so that you can get some real running specific advice from a running expert.
Go to https://www.docontherun.com/fasttrack/ and grab your seat now. I’ll see you in the training.
«« #423 Does calcaneal fat pad atrophy cause pain when running? | #425 Should I get a plantar fascia injection so I can run? »» |