American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation (ACVSMR): How to Become Board-Certified

ACVSMR certifies veterinarians in canine and equine sports medicine and rehabilitation, the two specialties AVMA lists under the college, under the title Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation.

It is a small field by headcount: AVMA counts 301 active diplomates as of December 31, 2025, with 128 listed under Canine and 173 under Equine, figures that add up to the full 301.

The college's residency page frames the training itself as focused on specific aspects of sports medicine and rehabilitation as they relate to athletic animals and the restoration of normal function after injury or illness, in all animals.

The prerequisite is completion of a 1-year rotating internship, or an equivalent, before starting an ACVSMR residency.

The Traditional Residency Program that follows is designed to be completed in 156 consecutive weeks, with the majority of training — more than 50 percent — at one practice or institution that meets all requirements for training, supervision, didactic education, and clinical experience.

A formal residency training program requires oversight and supervision by a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, and the resident's training is to focus on specific aspects of sports medicine and rehabilitation.

For planning, read that as an internship year followed by a program the college sizes at 156 consecutive weeks — the spine every candidate's schedule hangs on.

The Alternative Residency Program must meet the same criteria as the traditional one but is often completed over a longer period, and the college's framing is flexibility: a candidate can satisfy all training requirements within 6 years of the residency program's start date.

The college's own example is a veterinarian functioning as a resident, working part-time within a practice or institution under ACVSMR diplomate supervision.

Programs whose training is split between two or more practices or institutions, rather than concentrated at a single site, count as alternative programs too.

For a veterinarian who cannot leave practice for a consecutive 156 weeks, this is the route that bends the schedule — the 6-year ceiling is the bound to plan around.

Certification runs through two gates after training.

The first is the Credentials: submission and acceptance of all Credentials, which the college defines as completion of the resident training program and a first-author manuscript accepted for publication — so the publication has to be landed before the packet goes in, which pushes writing into the residency years rather than after them.

The second gate is successfully passing both components of the Board-Certification Examination.

Then the credential carries a maintenance cycle: every 10 years from the initial certification date, an active diplomate must take action to maintain board certification, either by accumulating 500 credits as outlined in Section II of the college's Guidelines for Maintenance of Board Certification, with the $100 recertification fee, or through the examination route, where the fee is $1,000.

The training also runs on a calendar: for all residency programs, a resident applicant must apply by March 15 for a start date the following July.

The college states one exception — residents accepted to a pre-approved residency training program apply directly to that program, per its instructions.

For every other applicant, the March deadline is the planning anchor: an internship year finishing in spring feeds an application due March 15 for a July start, and a missed cycle generally moves the schedule to the next year.

Anyone weighing the traditional program's 156 consecutive weeks should therefore count forward from a March application, not backward from an available start date.