Research Topic · Peer-Reviewed

Physicians

Physicians are licensed medical practitioners who diagnose illness, prescribe treatment, and coordinate care across the spectrum of human health and disease. The role spans primary care and a wide array of specialties and subspecialties, and rests on a foundation of basic and clinical science, evidence-based decisio…

Curated from this journal's research 📚 12 peer-reviewed articles cited Cited 27× across the literature 🔖 ISSN 2578-8590 🗓 Reviewed July 2026

Overview

Physicians are licensed medical practitioners who diagnose illness, prescribe treatment, and coordinate care across the spectrum of human health and disease. The role spans primary care and a wide array of specialties and subspecialties, and rests on a foundation of basic and clinical science, evidence-based decision-making, and direct accountability to patients. Contemporary scholarship on physicians examines not only clinical competence but the broader determinants of practice quality, including workload, working-time arrangements, professional satisfaction, communication and social competence, and the psychosocial demands of the profession. A substantial body of work addresses clinical decision support and prescribing behaviour, encompassing antimicrobial stewardship, the appropriate use of medication plans and quality indicators, and the integration of analytic tools into bedside judgement. Related inquiry considers physician knowledge and attitudes toward specific interventions such as vaccination, multidisciplinary and second-opinion patterns in procedural specialties, and the medicolegal and institutional pressures that shape practice, including peer review and hospital governance. The peer-reviewed research collected here reflects these themes across diverse health systems and populations, spanning hospital and ambulatory settings, surveys of prescribers and pharmacists, and studies of how physicians respond to organisational change. Together this literature situates the physician as both a clinical actor and a unit of analysis in health-services research and quality improvement.

Research published in this journal

12 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.

How this research is being cited

The 12 articles above have been cited 27 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.

A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Physicians, linking to each citing work.

Editorial oversight

Curated from peer-reviewed research published in International Physiology Journal (ISSN 2578-8590).

Journal editorial board
Carola Forster · Germany Ricardo J Fernandes · Portugal Alicja Kuban-Jankowska · Poland

This page summarises published research for orientation; it is not medical or professional advice.