The No. 1 way people chose their doctors until a few years ago was by asking friends, said Dr. Lee H. McCormick, who just finished his term as president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society. It's too bad, but that's the way it's being done now. We should choose our doctors as if our lives depended on it. Medical societies and consumer health groups say a doctor's academic history, whether he or she is continuing his or her medical education, whether he or she is board-certified and what hospitals he or she is affiliated with are important for patients to know about. After medical school a doctor takes three to seven years of specialty training, called a residency, caring for patients under supervision.
Some doctors take several residencies, including a residency in a subspecialty.
Knowing a physician's subspecialty or secondary specialty is vital. Just knowing a doctor is an orthopedic surgeon, for example, isn't sufficient to tell you whether he or she can repair your torn knee cartilage or perform your mother's hip replacement surgery. He or she may treat only shoulders, hands, the spine or children. And if you are looking for a primary care physician and you have a chronic condition such as a heart problem, you may want to see an internist who is also a cardiologist. Whether a doctor is board-certified is of great importance, experts say, because it shows he took extra years of training in his specialty and passed a stringent exam by the board of his specialty.