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James D. Dalton, Jr., M.D.
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James David Dalton, Jr., M.D. joined South Carolina Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center in 2000 with fellowship training and board certification in orthopaedics and sports medicine. After graduating from Clemson University in 1986 with honors and a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology, he attended Duke University School of Medicine, graduating in 1990. Impressed with Duke's orthopaedic surgery program, Dr. Dalton stayed on at Duke for six more years of residency training. In 1996 he went to the University of Pittsburgh Center for Sports Medicine and completed a shoulder and sports medicine fellowship in 1997.
Dr. Dalton moved to Summerville with his father, J. David Dalton M.D. in 1977. Through high school, he enjoyed hobbies as hunting, fishing, playing his guitar, and swimming. He sometimes worked in his dad's orthopaedic office, assisting in the cast room, running errands, and even painting walls.
Dr. Dalton began his undergraduate career at Clemson University in August 1982. A major undeclared at matriculation, he settled on microbiology with a pre-med course emphasis by the end of his first semester. With his eyes fixed on medical school, he was disciplined with his studies and anything less than an A was unacceptable. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Clemson in 1986, he moved to Durham, North Carolina to attend medical school at Duke University. As the first third generation medical student in the history of the school - his grandfather was in Duke's first medical school class of 1932 and his father in the class of 1972 - attending Duke was both the fulfillment of a dream and a return to his North Carolina roots. He was born just an hour down the road in Asheboro and was delivered by his grandfather, who was practicing rural general medicine at the time. When his father decided to leave teaching for medicine, the family packed up and moved to Durham, where he spent most of his younger years.
Back in Durham, he began the rigors of medical school, which at Duke consisted of a year of academic studies, a year of research, and two years of clinical rotations. Year number one was certainly more challenging than anything he had experienced during his undergraduate studies, but the classroom protocol was a familiar environment that gave him a chance to get to know his fellow classmates. When it came time for him to decide on a research project for the next year, he figured that basic science research in an orthopaedic lab would be a good way to test the orthopaedic waters. The paper that resulted from his research, Viscoelastic Properties of Muscle-Tendon Units: The Biomechanical Effects of Stretching, went on to receive the American Orthopaedic Society For Sports Medicine award for excellence in basic science research, and the experience helped to solidify his interest in orthopaedic surgery.
Dr. Dalton's first year of residency as an intern in general surgery was by far the most brutal of his training. After one year of a general surgery internship, most orthopaedic training programs began specialty training the following year. But at Duke, residents in all the surgical specialties were required to do an extra year of general surgery training as a Junior Assistant Resident (JAR). Although the call schedule was somewhat less grueling than the previous year, Dr. Dalton was still working in excess of 130 hours a week - in the hospital. JAR's spent most of their time in the emergency room and in the intensive care units. The year ended up being exceptionally rewarding as it enabled Dr. Dalton to hone his patient care skills, especially in emergency situations. Because JAR's were encouraged to take initiative, he and another resident invented and patented a trauma board that was used in Duke's emergency room.
During the next four years of orthopaedic training, Dr. Dalton spent time with each of the attending surgeons in the department, all specializing in different sub-specialties of orthopaedics. He found himself especially enjoying sports medicine, and since he was not particularly interested in making academic medicine a career, sports medicine seemed to have broad applications in private practice. When selecting a fellowship program, he knew he wanted to live somewhere very different - it was only going to be one year and a new life experience would give him another point of view. Dr. Dalton felt that a fellowship year needed to be packed with strong surgical opportunities that would challenge his skills, so he narrowed his choices to what he considered to be the best programs in the country. Based on these criteria, he chose a sports program at the University of Pittsburgh that included a four month shoulder fellowship. Although Duke molded him as a surgeon, it was the Pittsburgh program that applied the finishing touches.
During his fellowship year, Dr. Dalton continued his pursuit of practice opportunities in North and South Carolina, finally deciding to join a one-man practice in central North Carolina. Through changing turn of events and after a phone call to his father and a fast-track processing of paperwork, Dr. Dalton became the eighth man in a Charleston area orthopaedic practice.
In 1998, Dr. Dalton and his father (known as Dalton, Sr., now that his son was back in town) started Charleston Centers for Orthopaedic Care (CCOC). A solo practice was quite a challenge, since his father was semi-retired, but a committed staff helped them to weather the demands of a new business. Dr. Dalton's father was in the final stages of planning his retirement when South Carolina Sports Medicine approached him about joining their team, since one of their surgeons was also retiring. He realized that it would be tough going until he could bring on a partner and called South Carolina Sports Medicine to accept their offer. It was one of the best decisions of his life.
As a partner in South Carolina Sports Medicine, Dr. Dalton has access to some of the best orthopaedic expertise in the country through the high-powered training and knowledge of his five fellowship-trained peers. Providing state of the art orthopaedic care is a priority for the entire team, and egos never get in the way of asking each other for advice on medical and orthopaedic issues. Dr. Dalton's quality of life is enhanced by the fact that he can take a day here and there to spend with his family and rest assured that his patients are in the capable hands of the best and the brightest - his partners.
Residing in Charleston with his family, Dr. Dalton can not think of anywhere else he would rather live and practice medicine. He has the benefit of the best practice partners around. They are indeed peers that he can feel confident will give good care to his and their own patients.
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