actually GP is an old term to refer to a generalist; the closest thing now is the FP (family practioner) which describes someone with a residency designed to take care of training in the bread and butter of medicine "from womb to tomb" (hopefully well separated in time).
Primary care is as you suspect, those field swhich are sort of the gatekeeper (from a managed care perspective) or nonspecialist but still focused training. Confusion I know but medicine, peds, psyc and even onbs gyne are primary care. people go to these folks for the basics (though psych wouldnt really be for basic primary medicine but it gets inclded in there).

most sgu folks go into primary care for two reasons; the school aims to put out primary care docs and (and reason one related to this) because they tend to be the easier positions to get for residency.

As for the dept Ive yet to hear of an sgu grad taking scraps in the gutter so you'll probably be ok.

AS for me? Paying off the school loans with my house sale so word to the wise, buy for residency if you can (mortgage companies like doctors. a lot.)

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Steph
If you get a warning, put on yer manpants and stop whining about it.

I guess we use terms differently depending on where you are. In our neck of the woods, we still have a few old "GP's" in private practice. They are old docs who did not complete residencies and went into practice after obtaining their licenses at the end of their internship year. These doc's practice like family practice doc's and their experiences make up for their lack of formal residency trainings. They refer to themselves as "GP's," and that's how others refer to them as well. Folks who completed residency trainings usually are referred to by their residency training around here (family practioner, internist, pediatrician... etc)

Our hospital medical staff by-laws define "GP" as a physician without full residency training and are not board eligible in any recognized board. Their privileges are limited to H&P only, and generally must turn over care of hospitalized patients to a hospitalist or other active medical staff with inpatient privileges.

Nitpicking in wordings, really. But that's how we refer to GP's in our neck of the woods 8)

P

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Jean Luc Picard
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