What does an MD do?

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An allopathic practitioner or medical doctor (MD) practices a biologically based approach to treating illnesses and injuries. Allopathic medicine is a term that refers to conventional medical practice, also called Western or modern medicine. This physician uses pharmacologic agents or other physical intervention to diagnose, treat, and prevent the symptoms and processes of disease and other conditions. Other duties include examining patients, ordering and analyzing diagnostic tests, and collecting and reviewing medical histories.

For most people living in the western world, an allopathic doctor is the most familiar type of doctor. A doctor usually works in a clinic, hospital or private practice where he or she sees and examines patients. They work to prevent and cure illness and injury by consulting a patient’s medical history as well as ordering and interpreting diagnostic tests. Many specialize, for example working specifically with children or treating a certain type of cancer.

The typical contact of an allopathic physician with a patient begins when the patient makes an appointment. The appointment may be for a routine physical exam, a vaccination, or to assess symptoms and diagnose a condition. The doctor usually begins by listening to the patient describe the reason for the visit, and then performs an examination, a review of the medical history, and diagnostic tests, if necessary. All of this information is used by an allopathic practitioner when trying to reach a definitive diagnosis.

Once the diagnosis is made, the doctor will usually recommend a treatment plan that may, but does not always, include medication. If surgery or other examination by a specialist is required, the patient will be referred. In emergency situations, a physician may not be able to speak to or obtain consent from a patient prior to treatment. In such cases, the physician usually needs to judge how best to proceed, perhaps in consultation with colleagues.

Rather than working directly with patients, some allopathic doctors teach or do research in laboratories. This research may be funded by a government, private company or other source. Research topics vary greatly, from discovering the cause of a specific condition to finding a cure for an illness.

A person planning to become an allopathic physician in the United States or Canada must first earn a bachelor’s degree before completing medical school. Most medical school prerequisite courses are science-dominated, including general and organic chemistry, physics, and biology. Biochemistry, calculus, and a behavioral science such as psychology may also be needed. In addition, a medical school usually requires the candidate to take an aptitude test, such as the Medical School Admission Test or MCAT, and spend some time shadowing a working allopathic physician.

In the United States, medical schools require four years of coursework in addition to an undergraduate degree. The first two years are generally preclinical, during which students focus on classroom and laboratory instruction in subjects such as physiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry. The last two years are the clinical phase. Students are placed in teaching hospitals or similar settings, where they work with patients under the supervision of attending physicians. After graduation, students cannot self-practice as allopathic physicians until they complete an internship.

Homeopath Samuel Hahnemann coined the term allopathic medicine in about 1810. It is commonly used by advocates of alternative medicine when referring pejoratively to conventional or allopathic physicians, many of whom have never accepted the label. While homeopathy is based on the belief that disease can be treated with dilute solutions that should produce similar symptoms in a healthy person, an allopathic physician is trained and relies primarily on pharmacological treatments that produce effects different from those of the disease or injury.

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