Attending physician

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In the United States, an attending physician (also known as an attending or staff physician) is a physician who has completed residency and practices medicine in a clinic or hospital, in the specialty learned during residency. An attending physician can supervise fellows, residents and medical students. Attending physicians may also have an academic title at an affiliated university. This is common if the supervision of trainees is a significant part of the physician's work. Attending physicians have final responsibility, legally and otherwise, for patient care, even when many of the minute-to-minute decisions are being made by subordinates (physician assistants, resident physicians, and medical students).

Attending MDs may also still be in training, such as a fellow in a subspecialty. For example, a cardiology fellow may function as an internal medicine attending, as he has already finished residency in internal medicine. The term is used more commonly in teaching hospitals. In non-teaching hospitals, essentially all MDs function as an attending MD in some respects.

The term "attending physician" or "attending" also refers to the formal relationship of a hospitalized patient and their primary doctor during the hospitalization, as opposed to ancillary physicians assisting the primary doctor, referred to as consultants. However, even on a consultation service, at an academic center, the MD who has finished his training is called the attending, as opposed to a resident physician.