Physician job description
1,489 verified openings in Physicians & Advanced Practice
Pay here depends entirely on which specialty is being counted. Physicians and surgeons as a whole had a median wage of $275,930 in May 2025, inside a band running from under $76,560 to above $488,320. The specialties underneath spread widely: family medicine at $244,180, general internal medicine at $256,560, and general pediatrics at $210,040. The duties described below are family medicine specifically, the occupation O*NET details as 29-1215.00, and $244,180 comes off that specialty's own wage line rather than the all-specialties figure. BLS counted 808,800 physicians in 2025 inside a physicians and surgeons group of 862,800.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
A family physician treats individuals and families across the lifespan: prescribing and administering treatment, therapy, medication, and vaccination, ordering and interpreting tests to reach a diagnosis, recording history and examination results, monitoring conditions and reworking treatment when the picture changes, and explaining all of it to the patient. Advice on diet, activity, hygiene, and prevention belongs to the visit, as does referral to specialists and coordination with nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and rehabilitation therapists. Physicians direct the clinical staff around them and many teach residents and medical students. Family medicine is the largest specialty by headcount at 114,300 jobs in 2025, ahead of general internal medicine at 73,100, with another 367,400 physicians in the specialties BLS files as all other.
Common Skills and Technologies
Critical thinking leads the skill profile, with reading comprehension and active listening behind it, plus the writing and time management a full clinic day runs on. Epic is the record system most physician postings name, with MEDITECH and eClinicalWorks EHR the other two in wide use. Microsoft Excel and Office cover the scheduling, billing, and reporting side.
Education, Training, and Career Path
The route is a bachelor's degree, four years of medical school, and 3 to 9 years of internship and residency depending on specialty, with subspecialists adding a fellowship of 1 to 3 years. Licensing is state by state, and it takes an accredited medical school and completed residency in the specialty. Board certification is voluntary and common, earned by finishing residency and passing a specialty board exam. Nearly 60 percent of practicing family physicians name a doctorate as their highest credential and 29 percent post-doctoral training on top of it; the rest reported a master's or less.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-1215.00 Family Medicine Physicians, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1215.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-1215, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291215.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm.