Talk:Physician
Question: Is a dentist a specialization of physician?--LA2
Other than the fact that we are naming types of doctors rather than medical specialties, this page duplicates medicine.
LA2: Yes, but we need a page that's titled "surgeon" because we want to document that a person was surgeon and the surgeon page could point to famous surgeons. So that page is part of a structure of physicians (this page), at the same time as it points to the art of surgery, which is part of the medicine structure. Which other way could we accomplish this? The words exist in our language (surgery and surgeon), so people will find need to link to them. We already have the same parallel structure with scientist and science and their subcategories.----
If you want a page for surgeon, then you have to add a link to this page like
Surgeon
- A physician is a rather American term. (From a historical perspective I don't see anything wrong with it, but it has largely fallen into disuse in Australia, and I suspect the UK as well.
- Per se, I don't think a physician is someone "licensed" to practice medicine. A physician is someone qualified to practice medicine (the profession is much older than government registration of its members.)
- The term "licensing" is an Americanism. We have the same thing in Australia, but its called "registration" here (I think its the same in the UK).
--- SJK
- Yep, registration with the General Medical Council in the UK Derek
Traditionally at least a GP is not a specialist; they are non-specialists, i.e. generalists. (Nowadays medical education is offering specialist training as a GP, but I still wouldn't say they count as a specialist -- for one thing, they don't get to charge anywhere near as much.)
Also, whats an "internist"? -- SJK
Minor spelling matter - I changed practice to practise, and it got changed back. As far as I'm aware, a doctor practises in a practice, by analogy to advise and advice. No? -- Khendon