physician
Meaning of physician: Doctor is a courtesy title held across many professions, while physician names a specific license with a legally defined scope.
Definition of physician
A physician is a medical doctor licensed to prevent, diagnose and treat illness and injury. The route runs through a medical degree, a licensing examination and several years of supervised postgraduate training in a chosen field, whether that is primary care or a specialty such as pediatrics, psychiatry, radiology, pathology or surgery. Requirements and scope vary by jurisdiction.
What does the training involve?
A medical degree comes first, taken either as an undergraduate program or after an earlier degree depending on the country. Supervised postgraduate training follows, with responsibility increasing year by year, called residency in some systems and foundation and specialty training in others. Narrower fields add a further period of subspecialty training on top. Licensing is granted by a regulator in each jurisdiction, normally requires passing examinations, and is maintained through documented continuing education. In the United States two degree paths exist, MD and DO, and both lead to the same license and the same practice rights.
How does the role divide?
| Branch | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Primary care | Family medicine, general internal medicine and pediatrics; first contact and continuing care |
| Medical specialties | Cardiology, neurology, oncology and others; diagnosis and non-surgical treatment |
| Surgical specialties | Operating disciplines, from general surgery through to neurosurgery |
| Diagnostic specialties | Radiology, pathology and nuclear medicine; interpretation rather than direct treatment |
| Public health | Work aimed at populations rather than individual patients |
Some branches involve very little face-to-face contact. A radiology specialist may shape a great many treatment decisions without ever meeting the people concerned.
How does it differ from other clinical roles?
Physician is not a synonym for every health professional. Nurse practitioners, a physician assistant, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, pharmacists and psychologists each hold a separate license with its own defined scope, and some of those scopes overlap substantially with a physician's while others barely touch it. What any of them may do is set by the jurisdiction rather than by the title itself. One further source of confusion is regional: in parts of the world physician means specifically a doctor of internal medicine, as distinct from a surgeon, rather than any licensed medical doctor. In most systems primary care is where the general use of the word is most familiar.
Also known as
Used in a sentence
The physician reviewed the examination findings and discussed the treatment options.
Good to know
Physician is not a synonym for every health care professional, since the title and the legal scope of medical practice are defined by the jurisdiction in which a professional is licensed.
Word origin
Where “physician” comes from
The word entered English through Old French and Latin and traces back to Greek physis, meaning nature, by way of Latin physica, meaning natural science.