Description
Tyler CarlLee, M.D., UAMS Health shoulder and elbow orthopaedic and sports medicine surgeon in Northwest Arkansas, discusses why he loves sports medicine and taking care of athletes.
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Transcript
Hi, I’m Tyler CarlLee. I’m an orthopaedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine, shoulder and elbow. We have two locations here in Northwest Arkansas.
I’ve been doing orthopaedic surgery for six years. I’ve been focusing on sports medicine for about a year and a half.
I chose sports medicine because it combines professional interests with personal interests. The things I do outside of work are playing sports with my son. I was a former athlete myself. I enjoy going to sports as a fan. And so, taking care of athletes is something that comes naturally to me.
So the majority of patients I’ll be seeing will either have shoulder or knee complaints, but we will see basically any musculoskeletal problem, whether that’s an acute injury or something that’s been nagging someone for years.
I’m interested in all patients. That’s one of the beauties of sports medicine. Even though it’s called sports medicine, we take care of adolescents all the way up to elderly patients with degenerative conditions. So I see a variety of athletes, weekend warriors, professionals and recreational injuries that happen in normal activities. So pretty much a very wide range of patients.
I like to educate patients on their diagnoses. A lot of patients come in and see me and don’t know what’s going on. They just know that their shoulder or their knee has been bothering them for a long time. So the first thing I like to focus on is providing an explanation of what’s actually causing their symptoms. And then a lot of times we spend the majority of the visit discussing surgical or non-surgical options and then catering the treatment outcome for what the patient is seeking.
My goal is to get my patients back to the activities that they want to do. So if that’s an elite athlete, I want to get them to the highest level of competition that they were competing at before they were injured. If that’s somebody who just plays with their grandkids on the weekends, I want them to be able to do that without experiencing the pain they had when they came to see me.
I think UAMS offers a unique environment being the academic medical center in the state so that you have the highest trained professionals in their field. It provides a collegial environment where we can learn from each other as practitioners and then also the latest and greatest techniques for treatment in a specific area.
