HIV: OPTIONS FOR MEDICAL CARE-GLOSSARY OF HOSPITAL PEOPLE AND PRACTICES: RESIDENTS, FELLOWS AND INTERNS

Residents and fellows are physicians who have recently graduated from medical school but who are not yet practicing medicine on their own.

Residents are still in residency, that is, they are still in training to obtain their credentials in a specialty, usually in family practice or internal medicine. Most residents receive three years of training. Fellows are physicians who have finished their residency training and are now training in a subspecialty—for example, infectious diseases. As for nomenclature, “interns” are now called “first-year residents.” Residents and fellows are found in teaching hospitals that have the credentials for training specialists.

If you are in a teaching hospital, the physicians you are likely to see most often are residents in internal medicine or family practice, and fellows in infectious diseases or some other subspecialty. Their autonomy in making decisions about your medical care varies, depending on their training, the rules of the hospital, and the idiosyncrasies of the physician-of-record.