In this episode of The Ortho Show podcast, HSS sports medicine surgeon Karen M. Sutton, MD discussed her holistic approach to treating athletes, the challenges of treating female athletes, her recent appointment to the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and more.

“I try to relate to the athlete and understand what their passions are in life. That’s the first thing is to really try and listen. The second thing is trying to understand how the injury happened - and fixing it, but how can we prevent that in the future? That is with a lot of strength and conditioning training. I’ll talk to them all the time about nutrition. For female athletes specifically are they having their periods or their menses to delve into to see if they have something called the female athlete triad. I like to spend a lot of time with them to understand their overall health and well-being,” noted Dr. Sutton.

Dr. Sutton explained the challenges of treating female athletes as they go through puberty including, “How the body changes, how the body metabolizes, nutrients. We do have to work a lot harder during that phase [puberty] to keep these athletes healthy," she said.

On her recent appointment to the Board of Directors of AAOS, Dr. Sutton cited, “The Board of Directors has been great. The academy goes through an introductory process. Those of us who are new members are going through training periods. Right now we’ve had two 2.5 hour trainings where we go through all the rules and regulations of the academy, what happens from governance to working with the political action committee for orthopedics, and understanding who we are representing. Going even into who are the people in the academy of orthopedic surgeons – that spans from MDs, DOs, PAs - and there’s a lot of different people involved. We need to understand who we are representing. The other thing that comes out is conflict of interest and making sure we are appropriately using our thoughts as we’re voting on different things and we are not biased on any direction. I think they do a really great job on giving us background.”

Listen to the full episode at Theorthoshow.com.