Medical doctor

A medical doctor, also known as a physician (American and Canadian English) or medical practitioner (British English), is a health professional who practices medicine. Medicine aims to promote, maintain or restore health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental conditions. Doctors may focus on certain disease categories, types of patients, and methods of treatment, known as specialities. Others work in general practice, providing continuing and comprehensive medical care to individuals, families. Medical practice requires both thorough knowledge of the medical sciences—such as anatomy, physiology, diseases, and their treatment—and strong competence in applying this knowledge in practice, which forms the art or craft of the profession. Both the role of doctors and the meaning of the word itself vary around the world. Degrees and other qualifications vary widely, but there are some common elements, such as medical ethics requiring that doctors show consideration, compassion, and benevolence for their patients.

Terminology

The term doctor commonly refers to medical practitioners across the world, but may also be applied to holders of non-medical doctoral degrees. While the term physician is used in North America to refer to medical practitioners in a general sense, in the United Kingdom and countries influenced by British English this word refers to specialists in internal medicine specifically.

British and Commonwealth The British meaning of the term physician is the original one, and is used in opposition to surgeon, which refers to a specialist in surgery. This meaning of physician conveys a sense of expertise in treatment with drugs, rather than with the manual procedures used by a surgeon. The English word physician is at least nine hundred years old: physicians and surgeons were once members of separate professions, and traditionally were rivals. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, gives a Middle English quotation making this contrast, from as early as 1400: "O Lord, whi is it so greet difference betwixe a cirugian and a physician." Henry VIII granted a charter to the London Royal College of Physicians in 1518. It was not until 1540 that he granted the Company of Barber-Surgeons (ancestor of the Royal College of Surgeons) its separate charter. In the same year, the English monarch established the Regius Professorship of Physic at the University of Cambridge. Newer universities would probably describe such an academic as a professor of internal medicine. Hence, in the 16th century, physic meant roughly what internal medicine does now. This original use is common in much of the world including the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries (such as Australia, Bangladesh, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe), as well as in places as diverse as Brazil, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Ireland, and Taiwan. In such places, the more general terms doctor or medical practitioner are used to describe any person whose practises medicine. In Britain, the use of the term "doctor" for medical practitioners is a courtesy and does not indicate possession of a doctorate; British doctors must have a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery to practise. Community-oriented providers of primary care are called general practitioners, commonly abbreviated to GP.

North American

In the United States and Canada, the term physician describes all medical practitioners holding a professional medical degree. The American Medical Association (AMA), established in 1847, as well as the American Osteopathic Association, founded in 1897, both currently use the term physician to describe members. The AMA advocates for the definition of a physician as "an individual possessing degree of either a Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine". However, the American College of Physicians, established in 1915, use the term physician in its original sense. Specialists in internal medicine may be described as an internist. Another term, hospitalist, was introduced in 1996, to describe US specialists in internal medicine who work largely or exclusively in hospitals. Such "hospitalists" now make up about 19% of all US general internists, who are often called general physicians in Commonwealth countries. In North America, community-oriented providers of primary care are called family doctors or primary care physicians. The vast majority of physicians trained in the United States have a Doctor of Medicine degree, and use the initials M.D. A smaller number attend osteopathic medical schools and have a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree and use the initials D.O. The World Directory of Medical Schools lists both MD and DO granting schools as medical schools located in the United States. After completion of medical school, physicians complete a residency in the specialty in which they will practice. Subspecialties require the completion of a fellowship after residency. Both MD and DO physicians participate in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) and attend ACGME-accredited residencies and fellowships across all medical specialties to obtain licensure. All boards of certification now require that physicians demonstrate, by examination, continuing mastery of the core knowledge and skills for a chosen specialty. Recertification varies by particular specialty between every seven and every ten years. As of 2022, more than a quarter of physicians in the United States were graduates of medical programs outside the United States, otherwise known as "IMGs" for "international medical graduates". As of 2026, more than a third of internal medicine physicians in the United States were IMGs.

Physician and surgeon

Around the world, the combined term physician and surgeon is used to describe either a general practitioner or any medical practitioner irrespective of specialty. This usage still shows the original meaning of physician and preserves the old difference between a physician, as a practitioner of physic, and a surgeon. The term may be used by state medical boards in the United States, and by equivalent bodies in Canadian provinces, to describe any medical practitioner.

Supply and demand

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