Family practitioners are physicians who are trained to treat virtually anyone who might walk in the door of a doctor's office. Their training includes rotations in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency medicine, and internal medicine. The strength of this training is an ability to formulate a treatment plan for patients with a multitude of complaints. Often, family practitioners act as a kind of triage. Patients with routine complaints are treated and followed, but for patients with relatively uncommon diseases such as TM, a referral to a neurologist is often in order.
Internists are specialists in internal medicine.
The scope of an internist s practice typically includes diseases of the heart, lung, liver, kidney, blood, digestive system, joints, and endocrine systems. Internists are trained to treat adults, and many will seek subspecialty training in a particular organ system. Like family practitioners, internists tend not to have advanced training in the neuromuscular system, and would typically refer a patient with TM to a neurologist. Neurologists are specialists in the neurologic system. Neurologists also treat some diseases of the muscle.