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—the science of medicine—and also a decent competence in its applied practice—the art or craft of medicine.
Osteopathic medicine is a branch of the medical profession in the United States that promotes the practice of science-based medicine, often referred to in this context as allopathic medicine, with a set of philosophy and principles set by its earlier form, osteopathy. Osteopathic physicians (DOs) are graduates of American osteopathic medical colleges and are licensed to practice the full scope of medicine and surgery in all 50 US states. The field is distinct from osteopathic practices offered in nations outside of the U.S., whose practitioners are generally not considered part of core medical staff nor of medicine itself, but rather are alternative medicine practitioners. The other major branch of medicine in the United States is referred to by practitioners of osteopathic medicine as allopathic medicine.
Internal medicine, also known as general internal medicine in Commonwealth nations, is a medical specialty for medical doctors focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of internal diseases in adults. Medical practitioners of internal medicine are referred to as internists, or physicians in Commonwealth nations. Internists possess specialized skills in managing patients with undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes. They provide care to both hospitalized (inpatient) and ambulatory (outpatient) patients and often contribute significantly to teaching and research. Internists are qualified physicians who have undergone postgraduate training in internal medicine, and should not be confused with "interns", a term commonly used for a medical doctor who has obtained a medical degree but does not yet have a license to practice medicine unsupervised.
University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) is the health sciences campus of the University of Mississippi and is located in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. UMMC, also referred to as the Medical Center, is the state's only academic medical center.
The Canadian Medical Association is a national, voluntary association of physicians and medical learners that advocates on national health matters. Its primary mandate is to drive positive change in health care by advocating on key health issues facing doctors and their patients.
University Health Network (UHN) is a public research and teaching hospital network in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is the largest health research organization in Canada, ranking first in Canada for total research funding. It was named Canada's top research hospital by Research Infosource from 2015 to 2022. The network includes three acute care hospitals – Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre – the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, and The Michener Institute, a post-secondary institution granting diplomas and certificates in health sciences and leadership. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year, there were over 39,000 acute inpatient stays and close to 121,000 emergency department visits across the three acute care hospitals. Newsweek has consistently named UHN's Toronto General Hospital as among the world's top hospitals, most recently ranking Toronto General as the world's 5th best hospital in 2023, and first in Canada.
The American College of Physicians (ACP) is a Philadelphia-based national organization of internists, who specialize in the diagnosis, treatment, and care of adults. With 161,000 members, ACP is the largest medical-specialty organization and second-largest physician group in the United States, after the American Medical Association. Its flagship journal, the Annals of Internal Medicine, is considered one of the five top medical journals in the United States and Britain.
Charles H. Hollenberg was a Canadian physician, educator and researcher.
Women's College Hospital is a teaching hospital in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located at the north end of Hospital Row, a section of University Avenue where several major hospitals are located. It currently functions as an independent ambulatory care hospital. The Chief of Staff is Dr. Sheila Laredo and the physician-in-chief is Dr. Paula Harvey.
Arnold Seymour Relman — known as Bud Relman to intimates — was an American internist and professor of medicine and social medicine. He was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) from 1977 to 1991, where he instituted two important policies: one asking the popular press not to report on articles before publication and another requiring authors to disclose conflicts of interest. He wrote extensively on medical publishing and reform of the U.S. health care system, advocating non-profit delivery of single-payer health care. Relman ended his career as professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM), located on the Health Science Campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of seven schools of medicine in Pennsylvania that confers the Doctor of Medicine degree. It also confers Ph.D and M.S. degrees in biomedical science, and offers a Narrative Medicine program.
The National Physicians Alliance (NPA) was a 501(c)(3) national, multi-specialty medical organization founded in 2005. The organization's mission statement was: "The National Physicians Alliance creates research and education programs that promote health and foster active engagement of physicians with their communities to achieve high quality, affordable health care for all. The NPA offers a professional home to physicians across medical specialties who share a commitment to professional integrity and health justice." In 2019, they merged with Doctors for America.
Unnecessary health care is health care provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. In the United States, where health care costs are the highest as a percentage of GDP, overuse was the predominant factor in its expense, accounting for about a third of its health care spending in 2012.
Choosing Wisely is a United States-based health educational campaign, led by the ABIM Foundation, about unnecessary health care.
Overscreening, also called unnecessary screening, is the performance of medical screening without a medical indication to do so. Screening is a medical test in a healthy person who is showing no symptoms of a disease and is intended to detect a disease so that a person may prepare to respond to it. Screening is indicated in people who have some threshold risk for getting a disease, but is not indicated in people who are unlikely to develop a disease. Overscreening is a type of unnecessary health care.
Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) is a Canadian-based health education campaign launched on April 2, 2014 under the leadership of Wendy Levinson, in partnership with the Canadian Medical Association, and based at Unity Health Toronto and the University of Toronto. The campaign aims to help clinicians and patients engage in conversations about unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures, and to assist physicians and patients in making informed and effective choices to ensure high quality care.
May Cohen, OC is a Canadian physician and educator. She is best known for initiating the creation of a women's health curriculum in Ontario medical schools and for her work as a women's health advocate.
Physicians and surgeons play an important role in the provision of health care in Canada. They are responsible for the promotion, maintenance, and restoration of health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments. As Canadian medical schools solely offer the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) or Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degrees, these represent the degrees held by the vast majority of physicians and surgeons in Canada, though some have a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.) from the United States or Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from Europe.
Onye Nnorom is a Canadian physician and public health specialist. She is an assistant professor and associate program director of the public health and preventative medicine residency program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is the Black health lead for University of Toronto's faculty of medicine, and is a former president of the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario. Her research considers public health and health inequality for Black and other marginalized communities.
Catharine Isobel Whiteside, CM, FRCPC, FCAHS is a Canadian physician and medical researcher. She is Director, Strategic Partnerships of Diabetes Action Canada and Chair of the board of the Banting Research Foundation. Whiteside is the former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
