By the time you have achieved 70 birthdays you know a lot about your own health. When you feel an ache or pain coming on, you have a pretty good sense of whether you should take two aspirins or pick up the phone and call the doctor's office. The physician you see on a regular basis has skills to care for most of what ails you. If your situation calls for it, your physician may consult with a specialist or may advise you to consult with one. Before a person is licensed to practice medicine, he or she must graduate from college and then complete four years of medical school.
Medical school consists of classroom lectures and hands on learning in hospitals and clinics.
These days, most medical school graduates choose to remain in training and receive an additional 3-5 years of specialty education and experience. What Makes a Specialist More education, more supervised experience and successful completion of a certification test makes a physician a specialist. A geriatrician is a medical doctor who has completed specialty training in family or internal medicine, and then trains an additional two or three years in a fellowship. Regardless of the amount or type of illness, geriatricians are trained to be experts in the human body in later life. Persons age 65 and older comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population and account for one-third of all hospital days.