Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1229.06
Sports Medicine Physicians
Diagnose, treat, and help prevent injuries that occur during sporting events, athletic training, and physical activities.
- US jobs
- 342,720 (SOC 29-1229 group, "Physicians, All Other")
- Median wage
- $265,930 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of sports medicine physicians?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Diagnose or treat disorders of the musculoskeletal system.
- Order and interpret the results of laboratory tests and diagnostic imaging procedures.
- Record athletes' medical histories, and perform physical examinations.
- Refer athletes for specialized consultation, physical therapy, or diagnostic testing.
- Provide education and counseling on illness and injury prevention.
- Advise against injured athletes returning to games or competition if resuming activity could lead to further injury.
- Examine, evaluate and treat athletes who have been injured or who have medical problems such as exercise-induced asthma.
- Record athletes' medical care information, and maintain medical records.
- Examine and evaluate athletes prior to participation in sports activities to determine level of physical fitness or predisposition to injuries.
- Prescribe medications for the treatment of athletic-related injuries.
- Develop and test procedures for dealing with emergencies during practices or competitions.
- Coordinate sports care activities with other experts, including specialty physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, or coaches.
Other job titles for this occupation (16)
Athletic Team Physician · MD (Medical Doctor) · Nonsurgical Primary Care Sports Medicine Physician · Orthopedic Team Physician · Pediatric Sports Medicine Physician · Physician · Sports Medicine Medical Doctor (Sports Medicine MD) · Sports Medicine Primary Care Physician · Sports Medicine Specialist · Team Physician · Industrial Sports Medicine Professional · Industrial Sports Medicine Specialist · Pediatric Sports Medicine Specialist · Primary Care Sports Medicine Physician · Sports Doctor · Sports Physician