Physicians treat their patients primarily with medication, but may carry out various technical procedures to assist in the diagnosis or treatment of your illness. Physicians can be called specialists, specialist physician and consultant physician, but they all mean the same thing. Physicians are doctors who have completed an extra six years or more years of training after their initial medical training. They can choose to specialise in a particular area of medicine for example cardiologists are physicians who specialise in diseases of the heart and endocrinologists look after people with diabetes and other glandular disorders. Physicians are not surgeons.
Surgeons perform operations.
Some physicians may do procedures to assist in finding out what is wrong with you but surgeons do major operations. Your physician may refer you to a surgeon for an operation once he has diagnosed your condition. Physicians also handle the illnesses of infants, children and adolescents. These physicians are called paediatricians. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians trains already qualified Doctors to become physicians.