Physician Job Description

A physician is the clinician who carries final responsibility for working out what is wrong with a patient and deciding what to do about it. Everything else on the chart flows from that call: the nursing orders, the pharmacy fills, the imaging slots, the referral letters. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 754,760 people in its broad Physicians occupation in May 2025.

The core loop looks the same in a rural clinic and a tertiary referral center. The physician takes a history, examines the patient, builds a differential diagnosis, and orders the labs or imaging that will narrow it. Results come back, the list shrinks, and a plan follows: a prescription, a procedure, a referral, admission, or watchful waiting with a clear return date. Then comes the part patients notice most, which is explaining all of it in language a frightened person can follow and agreeing on the next step together.

What fills the hours depends on specialty and setting. A family physician might see a toddler with an ear infection, an adult with poorly controlled diabetes and an older patient with new memory problems before lunch, then spend the afternoon on prenatal visits and depression follow-ups. A hospitalist rounds on a census of admitted patients, writes admission and discharge orders, and fields pages from nurses about fevers and falling blood pressure. A gastroenterologist splits the week between clinic and the endoscopy suite. An emergency physician works shifts and sees whoever comes through the door, from chest pain to overdoses.

Physicians also run teams. Residents, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, pharmacists and medical assistants all work from physician orders or in collaboration with the attending doctor, so a good share of the day goes to reviewing plans, answering questions and co-signing notes. In teaching hospitals the attending physician also trains medical students and residents at the bedside.

The paperwork is real and it is not optional. Every visit needs a note in the electronic health record, in a system such as Epic or Oracle Health, with an assessment, a plan, orders and the codes that drive billing. Insurers ask for prior authorization before many drugs, scans and procedures, and the physician or a staff member has to assemble the clinical justification. Hospitals run peer review, quality dashboards and credentialing files that the physician must keep current.

The BLS notes that most physicians and surgeons work full time, some work more than 40 hours per week, and many work long shifts. Outpatient physicians may take after-hours phone calls for their group, while obstetricians and cardiologists on call may need to reach the hospital quickly at night. Beyond the hours, the work carries legal weight: the physician signs the orders, holds the license and answers for the outcome.

The path to independent practice is long and fixed in sequence. The BLS describes it plainly: a bachelor's degree, then medical school, which takes an additional 4 years, then 3 to 9 years in internship and residency depending on specialty. Subspecialists such as cardiologists or oncologists add a fellowship of 1 to 3 years.

Before medical school. Applicants usually complete a bachelor's degree with the standard premedical sequence: biology, general and organic chemistry, physics and biochemistry, plus statistics and social science courses. Applicants also sit for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), administered by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Clinical exposure through shadowing, scribing, EMT work or research is typical guidance for a competitive application.

Medical school. The first phase covers anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathology; the second puts students on clerkships in internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry and family medicine. MD students take the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), a program of the Federation of State Medical Boards and the National Board of Medical Examiners. DO students take COMLEX-USA from the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners, and may also take the USMLE.

Residency. Graduates apply through ERAS and rank programs in the National Resident Matching Program's Main Residency Match. The 2026 Match had over 53,000 registered applicants and more than 44,000 residency positions offered. Primary care specialties made up the largest share, with 20,712 positions offered.

Licensure and registrations. A full license comes from each state's medical board after the candidate passes the final licensing step and completes the required postgraduate training. Physicians who prescribe controlled substances also need a registration from the Drug Enforcement Administration, plus any state controlled-substance registration their state requires. Hospital work requires credentialing and privileges at each facility.

Board certification. The BLS notes that board certification requires completing a residency program and passing a specialty certification exam. MDs typically certify through a member board of the American Board of Medical Specialties, such as the American Board of Internal Medicine or the American Board of Family Medicine; DOs can certify through American Osteopathic Association boards or ABMS boards. Each board sets its own continuing certification requirements.

Skills that separate strong candidates. Clinical reasoning under uncertainty, fluent EHR use, clear patient communication, procedural competence in the chosen field, and the stamina for call schedules. Early-career physicians also benefit from understanding employment contracts, productivity pay models built on relative value units, and non-compete terms before signing a first job.

The federal projection is steady rather than explosive. The BLS expects employment of physicians and surgeons to grow 4 percent from 2025 to 2035, about as fast as the average for all occupations, with about 22,100 openings a year on average. Many of those openings are expected to come from replacing workers who retire or move to other occupations.

Workforce models built for policy planning show a gap between supply and demand. The Association of American Medical Colleges, in its March 2024 report The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand, projected a shortage of between 13,500 and 86,000 physicians by 2036, including a shortage of between 20,200 and 40,400 primary care physicians. The Health Resources and Services Administration's December 2025 projections estimate a national shortage of 141,160 full-time equivalent physicians in 2038, with 30 of the 35 specialties it reports projected to fall short. The two projections cover different years and scenarios, so they read best as a range, not a forecast of a single number.

The pipeline into primary care is one place to watch. In the 2026 Main Residency Match, family medicine offered 5,491 positions, but its fill rate declined from 85.0 percent to 83.6 percent, according to the National Resident Matching Program.

Another structural change is who employs physicians. The AMA's Physician Practice Benchmark Survey found that between 2012 and 2024 the share of physicians working in private practices dropped by 18 percentage points, from 60.1% to 42.2%. For a new physician weighing offers, that makes the pay terms, call obligations and restrictive covenants in an employment contract worth close reading.

Medicare payment is the other lever to watch. In the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule final rule, CMS set a conversion factor of $33.40 for physicians who are not qualifying participants in advanced alternative payment models, a projected 3.26 percent increase, and $33.57 for qualifying participants, a projected 3.77 percent increase. The AMA notes that the increases include a temporary 2.5 percent pay bump passed by Congress in H.R. 1. The AMA has also objected to what it calls the problematic efficiency adjustment in the same rule.

Physician use of AI has climbed fast. The AMA's 2026 Physician Survey on Augmented Intelligence, which polled 1,692 physicians between January 15 and February 2, 2026, found that over 80% of respondents use AI in a professional context, double the share reported in 2023. Documentation and summarization tools lead adoption, and seven in ten respondents see opportunities for AI to automate the clinical and administrative tasks that contribute to burnout. Respondents named patient privacy and the patient-physician relationship as their biggest concerns. Whatever the tool drafts, the license, the signature and the liability still sit with the doctor.

The short version for anyone weighing the career: training is long, and the BLS, AAMC and HRSA projections all point to continued demand for physicians over the next decade.

Dear Dr. Whitaker,

I am applying for the family medicine physician position at Cedar Valley Community Health Center. I will complete my family medicine residency at Lakeshore Regional Medical Center in June, and I am board eligible with the American Board of Family Medicine.

Cedar Valley's model is the reason I am writing. Your clinic offers full-scope care in one building: prenatal visits, pediatric well checks, chronic disease management and behavioral health with an embedded counselor. That is the practice I trained for. During residency I carried a continuity panel of mostly Medicaid and uninsured patients, delivered babies on the labor and delivery service, and ran a weekly procedure clinic for IUD insertions, skin biopsies and joint injections.

My strongest project was on our diabetes registry. Working with two nurses and our pharmacist, I set up a standing order protocol so medical assistants could flag overdue A1c checks and foot exams at check-in. Our team then held monthly huddles to call patients who had fallen out of care. The work taught me that most improvements in a clinic come from fixing the workflow, not from asking people to try harder.

I am comfortable in Epic, including inbox management and the ambient documentation tool our program piloted this year, and I have supervised medical students and first-year residents on clinic days. I speak conversational Spanish and have used it daily with patients and families.

I would welcome the chance to visit Cedar Valley, meet your team and hear how you see the role growing over the next few years.

Sincerely, Maya Okafor, MD PGY-3, Family Medicine Residency Lakeshore Regional Medical Center