Medical doctors are licensed clinicians who diagnose, treat, and prevent illness across the lifespan, integrating history-taking, physical examination, laboratory and imaging investigation, pharmacological and procedural therapy, and patient counselling. The category spans generalists, such as family and internal-me…
Medical doctors are licensed clinicians who diagnose, treat, and prevent illness across the lifespan, integrating history-taking, physical examination, laboratory and imaging investigation, pharmacological and procedural therapy, and patient counselling. The category spans generalists, such as family and internal-medicine physicians, and specialists in fields including surgery, ophthalmology, oncology, and psychiatry. Beyond direct clinical management, the physician's role increasingly encompasses competencies that determine the quality and reach of care: communication and empathy, ethical decision-making, cultural competence, and the navigation of health systems. The scholarship gathered here examines several of these dimensions. It considers how healthcare providers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices shape the delivery of services such as preventive screening, pre-exposure prophylaxis, and reproductive care, and how access to those providers is shaped by health-system structures, particularly for elderly and underserved populations. Other studies assess the formation of doctors themselves, measuring empathy and emotional intelligence among medical students and postgraduate trainees, and the disparities that can arise when provider understanding of a patient's background is incomplete. Together this work situates the medical doctor not only as a technical expert but as a determinant of equitable, patient-centred care, whose training, disposition, and working environment materially affect health outcomes.
9 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.
The 9 articles above have been cited 78 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.
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