A medical specialist is someone who specializes in a particular field of medicine. While that definition may be superficial, what it denotes is not. Medical specialists go through additional training, above and beyond medical school and internship in order to become very knowledgeable about a specific part of the human body. You can expect a specialist to have taken at least two to three years of extra training, above and beyond that of a general internist, in their specific field, and that they will continually research progress in their field. In the medical profession they often function as consultants, either for private practice or employed by a hospital. General practitioners will see the patients first, and if they are presented with a patient that they cannot cure, or if they cannot discern what is causing the illness the specialist is called in to examine the patient. The philosophy behind this approach is that the average patient will not need a specialist, so specialists do not usually see them first, but wait until specifically asked. This system has the benefit of not requiring general internists to have incredibly specific knowledge of all medical matters, an impossible feat, but allows them to delegate responsibility to those with more specific knowledge when the situation calls for it. Jump to: navigation, search Medicine is a branch of health science concerned with maintaining human health and restoring it by treating disease and injury; it is both an area of knowledge, a science of body organ system|systems and diseases and their treatment, and the applied practice of that knowledge. ... Jump to: navigation, search A consultant (from the latin consultus meaning legal expert) is a professional that provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance or more esoteric areas of knowledge, for example engineering of different... A general practitioner (GP) or family physician (FP) is a physician/medical doctor who provides primary care. ...

External links

• American Board of Medical Specialties
• Army Medical Specialist Corps