A physician, medical practitioner, medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments. Physicians may focus their practice on certain disease categories, types of patients, and methods of treatment—known as specialities—or they may assume responsibility for the provision of continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals, families, and communities—known as general practice. Medical practice properly requires both a detailed knowledge of the academic disciplines, such as anatomy and physiology, underlying diseases, and their treatment, which is the science of medicine, and a decent competence in its applied practice, which is the art or craft of the profession.
Emergency medicine is the medical speciality concerned with the care of illnesses or injuries requiring immediate medical attention. Emergency medicine physicians specialize in providing care for unscheduled and undifferentiated patients of all ages. As first-line providers, in coordination with emergency medical services, they are primarily responsible for initiating resuscitation and stabilization and performing the initial investigations and interventions necessary to diagnose and treat illnesses or injuries in the acute phase. Emergency medical physicians generally practice in hospital emergency departments, pre-hospital settings via emergency medical services, and intensive care units. Still, they may also work in primary care settings such as urgent care clinics.
Mayo Clinic is a private American academic medical center focused on integrated healthcare, education, and research. It maintains three major campuses in Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona.
A general practitioner (GP) or family physician is a doctor who is a consultant in general practice.
Doctor of Medicine is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. This generally arose because many in 18th-century medical professions trained in Scotland, which used the M.D. degree nomenclature. In England, however, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.B.S.) was used: in the 19th century, it became the standard in Scotland too. Thus, in the United Kingdom, Ireland and other countries, the M.D. is a research doctorate, honorary doctorate or applied clinical degree restricted to those who already hold a professional degree (Bachelor's/Master's/Doctoral) in medicine. In those countries, the equivalent professional degree to the North American, and some others' usage of M.D. is still typically titled Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery.
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, professional school, or forms a part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, Master of Medicine, Doctor of Medicine (MD), or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO). Many medical schools offer additional degrees, such as a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), master's degree (MSc) or other post-secondary education.
The United States has more teaching hospitals than any other country in the world.
Hospital medicine is a medical specialty that exists in some countries as a branch of family medicine or internal medicine, dealing with the care of acutely ill hospitalized patients. Physicians whose primary professional focus is caring for hospitalized patients only while they are in the hospital are called hospitalists. Originating in the United States, this type of medical practice has extended into Australia and Canada. The vast majority of physicians who refer to themselves as hospitalists focus their practice upon hospitalized patients. Hospitalists are not necessarily required to have separate board certification in hospital medicine.
Residency or postgraduate training is a stage of graduate medical education. It refers to a qualified physician, veterinarian, dentist, podiatrist (DPM) or pharmacist (PharmD) who practices medicine or surgery, veterinary medicine, dentistry, podiatry, or clinical pharmacy, respectively, usually in a hospital or clinic, under the direct or indirect supervision of a senior medical clinician registered in that specialty such as an attending physician or consultant.
Family medicine is a medical specialty within primary care that provides continuing and comprehensive health care for the individual and family across all ages, genders, diseases, and parts of the body. The specialist, who is usually a primary care physician, is named a family physician. It is often referred to as general practice and a practitioner as a general practitioner. Historically, their role was once performed by any doctor with qualifications from a medical school and who works in the community. However, since the 1950s, family medicine / general practice has become a specialty in its own right, with specific training requirements tailored to each country. The names of the specialty emphasize its holistic nature and/or its roots in the family. It is based on knowledge of the patient in the context of the family and the community, focusing on disease prevention and health promotion. According to the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA), the aim of family medicine is "promoting personal, comprehensive and continuing care for the individual in the context of the family and the community". The issues of values underlying this practice are usually known as primary care ethics.
In the United States and Canada, an attending physician is a physician who has completed residency and practices medicine in a clinic or hospital, in the specialty learned during residency. An attending physician typically supervises fellows, residents, and medical students. Attending physicians may also maintain professorships at an affiliated medical school. This is common if the supervision of trainees is a significant part of the physician's work. Attending physicians have final responsibility, legally and otherwise, for patient care, even when many of the minute-to-minute decisions are being made by house officers (residents) or non-physician health-care providers. Attending physicians are sometimes the 'rendering physician' listed on the patient's official medical record, but if they are overseeing a resident or another staff member, they are 'supervising.'
Medical education is education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, including the initial training to become a physician and additional training thereafter.
In China, the practice of medicine is a mixture of government, charitable, and private institutions, while many people rely on traditional medicine. Until reforms in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, physicians were quasi-government employees and with little freedom in the choice of the hospital to work with. In addition, decades of planned economic policy discouraged physicians from opening their own clinics, and the practice of medicine was generally under the control of local units, such as factories, government, offices, or communes. The reforms created a largely private practice, and physicians now are encouraged to open private clinics and for-profit hospitals.
Medical education in Australia includes the educational activities involved in the initial and ongoing training of Medical Practitioners. In Australia, medical education begins in Medical School; upon graduation it is followed by a period of pre-vocational training including Internship and Residency; thereafter, enrolment into a specialist-vocational training program as a Registrar eventually leads to fellowship qualification and recognition as a fully qualified Specialist Medical Practitioner. Medical education in Australia is facilitated by Medical Schools and the Medical Specialty Colleges, and is regulated by the Australian Medical Council (AMC) and Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) of which includes the Medical Board of Australia where medical practitioners are registered nationally.
Medical education in the United States includes educational activities involved in the education and training of physicians in the country, with the overall process going from entry-level training efforts through to the continuing education of qualified specialists in the context of American colleges and universities.
A medicalintern is a physician in training who has completed medical school and has a medical degree, but does not yet have a license to practice medicine unsupervised. Medical education generally ends with a period of practical training similar to internship, but the way the overall program of academic and practical medical training is structured differs depending upon the country, as does the terminology used.
Medical school in the United States is a graduate program with the purpose of educating physicians in the undifferentiated field of medicine. Such schools provide a major part of the medical education in the United States. Most medical schools in the US confer upon graduates a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree, while some confer a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree. Most schools follow a similar pattern of education, with two years of classroom and laboratory based education, followed by two years of clinical rotations in a teaching hospital where students see patients in a variety of specialties. After completion, graduates must complete a residency before becoming licensed to practice medicine.
Clinical clerkships encompass a period of medical education in which students – medical, dental, veterinary, nursing or otherwise – practice medicine under the supervision of a health practitioner.
The University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville is the largest of the three University of Florida Health Science Center Jacksonville colleges — medicine, nursing and pharmacy. The college's 16 clinical science departments house more than 440 faculty members and 380 residents and fellows. The college offers 34 accredited graduate medical education programs and 10 non-standard programs.
The Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine (MCASOM), formerly known as Mayo Medical School (MMS), is a research-oriented medical school based in Rochester, Minnesota, with additional campuses in Arizona and Florida. MCASOM is a school within the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science (MCCMS), the education division of the Mayo Clinic. It grants the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). In November 2018, the school was renamed in honor of a $200 million donation from businessman Jay Alix.
