Who Practices Performing Arts Medicine?
Performing Arts Medicine (PAM) was my gateway to Rehabilitation Medicine (Physiatry). I wanted to know how to best address the musculoskeletal issues of performing artists, and found PAM sometime in medical school.
Rehabilitation Medicine (Physiatry) does not have a monopoly on PAM, but as a specialty it fits PAM very well. We physiatrists focus on function and employ non-surgical management for conditions affecting the muculoskeletal (bones, joints, ligaments, muscles) and neurologic (brain, spinal cord, nerves) systems. We look at how you move through time and space: how you get from point A to point B, how you do your activities of daily living such as bathing and dressing, how you interact with your environment at work, school or wherever else.
What does this mean for the performing artist? It means a physiatrist looks at how you dance, play an instrument or do whatever your craft requires you to do. After figuring out your problem, we – with the help of other rehabilitation clinicians like physical or occupational therapists on the team – aim to make you move in the way that is most efficient, least painful, while minimizing future injury risk.
PAM physicians can be from many different specialties. There really is no one path to practicing PAM; most people practice PAM within the scope of a larger, established specialty. Within Rehabilitation Medicine, for example, some physiatrists who practice PAM also have additional Sports Medicine training and treating performing artists are a natural extension of their practice. Among the other medical specialties, I know of ENT (ear-nose-throat) specialists who treat vocalists, orthopedic surgeons who do surgery on dancers’ feet and ankles, psychiatrists who address performance anxiety. Physicians who practice occupational medicine have appropriate skills for PAM as well.
Non-physician PAM clinicians are also from various fields. Physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, athletic trainers, psychologists, osteopaths, massage therapists and others can all have expertise in PAM. Many of the fine people I’ve met at the Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA) International Symposium come from diverse occupations. I appreciate PAMA for its openness to non-physicians and even non-clinicians: anyone – including and especially performing artists themselves – can be a part of it, as long as they are interested in improving and maintaining the health of performing artists.
