A Primary Care Physician is usually the first healthcare provider a person contacts when he doesn’t feel well and believes he needs medical attention. The main exceptions are when something goes seriously wrong and emergency treatment is needed or when the person needs medical care outside of typical clinic and doctor’s office hours. A general doctor is skilled at recognizing a broad range of symptoms and can make an initial diagnosis based on what the patient says and the clinical signs that are in evidence.
When a person comes to the doctor with a sore throat, for instance, it’s important that he sees a practitioner who distinguishes among conditions such as tonsillitis, strep throat, and the common cold. A throat swab and culture can identify strep throat, but a medical doctor usually has a pretty good idea even before the swab whether or not a sore throat is caused by strep.
These doctors provide a great deal of general care. In today’s world of medical specialization, many people don’t realize that a Primary Care Physician still provides prenatal care and delivers babies, counsels diabetic patients to help keep their blood sugar regulated, and helps patients with pain management.
This doctor sees patients of all ages, and many parents would rather bring their small children to a general practitioner than to a pediatrician. That way, everyone in the family sees the same doctor. That doctor may be the one who sets a child’s forearm fracture after a fall and diagnoses a case of mononucleosis in a teenager. He makes the initial diagnosis of a kidney stone in a young adult male and orders blood tests for a woman he suspects has celiac disease.
An individual who has become troubled because it seems he can never actually have an appointment with a medical doctor anymore might like to contact a physician such as Kirit Kothari, M.D. Many clinics assign patients to nurse practitioners and physician assistants today because of a shortage of doctors, but not everyone feels comfortable relying on a practitioner without that higher medical degree and related experience.
