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What kinds of doctors are there? Do I have to in involved in medicine to become a doctor? How many years of school?

I want to know more about doctors, because I am sort of interested in becoming a doctor. I enjoyed the dissections unit at school and I figured doctors deal with that kind of stuff. #college #doctor #medicine #pre-med

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Richard’s Answer

In the US, to apply to medical school, you need a bachelor's degree which takes between three and five years depending on the major. Then four years of medical school. After that several years of training in residency before you can enter practice.

So typically it takes 12-15 years after high school.

There are so many types of physicians. Broadly there are family practice doctors, internal medicine and its subspecialties, and surgery with its subspecialties. There are also physicians that don't fit in these such as psychiatry, radiology, pathology , physical medicine/rehabilitation.
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Estelle’s Answer

The major difference between specialties is whether they perform major procedures or not. For example, internists are adult medicine doctors who see patients in clinic and diagnose/treat patients in the office. Surgeons have office patients that they see preoperative and postoperatively but the majority of their time is spent in the operating room. Some specialties combine office and procedures: Ob/gyn encompasses delivering babies, performing gynecologic surgery, and office based exams. There are lots of opportunities in medicine.
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William’s Answer

There are fundamentally two types of medical doctors, Medical Doctors (Doctor of Medicine) (MD) and Osteopathic Doctor (DO's).

A medical doctor practices a form of medicine called allopathic. Allopathy is a termed applied to that system of therapeutics in which diseases are treated by producing a condition incompatible with or antagonistic to the condition so that it can be cured or alleviated. For example, an antibiotic taken by someone who has pneumonia is designed to create an environment for the bacteria causing the pneumonia, which will not allow the bacteria to survive, i.e, the patient is cured. That same antibiotic given to someone without a bacterial infection would not imporve their health.
A doctor of osteopathy has a more holistic approach to medicine and follow a medical philosophy in which they consider the patient's environment, nutrition , and body system as a whole when diagnosing and treating medical conditions. For example, DO's take an additional 200 hours of training in osteopathic manipulative medicine-the practive of manipulating musculoskeletal tissue to relieve pain, whereas a MD would prescribe pain relievers to relieve the patients discomfort.
Both MD's and DO's base their diagnosis and treatment recommendations on scientifically proven conclusions.

They both require attending a college with emphasis in their education on the biological sciences (PreMed coursework) and take the MCAT.
They both require attending four years in medical school, plus a residency program, which can range between 3-7 years. In my case, after attending 4 years at Temple Medical School, I did one year internship in Straight Internal Medicine, 4 year residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, 1 year Fellowship in Forensic Pathology and a 2 year Fellowship in Neuropathology.
Both are licensed by the same state licensing boards, i.e., both MD's and DO's must meet the same requirements to practice medicine.
Can practice on all 50 states.
Are found in every type of specialty medicine
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Rachel’s Answer

One big decision you will make in deciding what type of doctor you will be is whether you want to perform surgery or prescribe medications to treat your patients. Different types of doctors have totally different skill sets. If you go into surgery, that will be a 5 year residency after med school. If you go into internal medicine (treats mostly with medicines rather than procedures) that will be a 3 year residency after med school.
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