Doctor - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

# Doctor

### From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A doctor is someone who practices medicine to treat illnesses and injuries. Doctors go to medical school to be trained. Doctors once made house calls to visit patients at home, but now mostly see patients in their private offices or in hospitals. Doctors may also work for schools, companies, sports teams, or the military. Doctors are often assisted by nurses or other staff. Doctors are also called "physicians".

Doctors may treat a patient only by diagnosing them—figuring out what is wrong—and then prescribe treatment, often drugs, for the patient to get somewhere else. Other doctors are the ones who perform the treatment. A doctor who performs surgery is called a "surgeon".

Some doctors specialize in a certain kind of medicine. These doctors may only treat injuries to a certain part of the body, or only treat patients who have certain diseases. There are doctors who specialised in diseases of the stomach or intestines. Other doctors are "general practitioners", meaning that they do a little bit of everything and try to deal with as much of a patient's health problems as they can without sending them to a specialist doctor.

Other people who have advanced college degrees called Ph.D.s may be called "doctors" as well, though this is a less common meaning of the word.

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Categories: Medicine | Occupations

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