Family and General Practitioners
Career Snapshot
Many physicians choose to specialise on a certain patient group or area of the body... but family and general practitioners work with patients of all ages and conditions, from delivering babies and providing school-age children with check-ups to caring for elderly people with chronic diseases. Family doctors, often known as general practitioners or GPs, meet patients in places such as physicians' offices and hospitals for acute care and general health maintenance. They are responsible for diagnosing injuries, prescribing treatments, ordering testing, and interpreting test results. Communication skills are vital in this career since family doctors must explain potentially stressful procedures to patients and discuss test results with them. Some general practitioners are surgically trained and can do procedures such as biopsies and vasectomies. In more remote locations, family practitioners have much greater responsibilities, ranging from removing an appendix to performing C-section deliveries. They occasionally look after their patients in the hospital. GPs regularly confer with other doctors and, when necessary, refer patients to specialists. Family practise doctors complete four years of college, four years of medical school, and three years of family medicine residency. Those who pursue a particular field may need to train for an extra one to three years.
Characteristics
Activities
Areas of Study
Degrees
Key Abilities
-
Deductive Reasoning
-
Inductive Reasoning
-
Oral Comprehension
-
Oral Expression
-
Problem Sensitivity
-
Speech Clarity
-
Written Comprehension
-
Written Expression
Colleges
Top Skills