attending adj

1 being present at meeting or event [syn: in attendance(p)]

2 serving attendance on someone; "a ministering angel"; "the angels ministrant sang"; "the attending physician" [syn: ministering, ministrant]

1 the process whereby a person concentrates on some features of the environment to the (relative) exclusion of others [syn: attention] [ant: inattention]

2 the act of being present (at a meeting or event etc.) [syn: attendance] [ant: nonattendance]

English

Pronunciation

Adjective

attending

1. being an attending in a hospital
2. the attending physician

Noun

attending

1. the action of the verb to attend
2. a physician on the staff of a hospital, especially the principal one that supervises a patient's care

Verb form

attending

1. present participle of the verb to attend

An attending physician (also known as an attending, consultant, or staff physician) is a physician who has completed residency and practices medicine in a clinic or hospital, in the speciality learned during residency. An attending physician can supervise fellows, residents/registrars and medical students. Attending physicians may also have an academic title at an affiliated university such as "professor". 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 doctors 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 doctors function as attendings 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 medical doctor who has finished his training is called the attending or consultant, as opposed to a resident physician.

See also

• Consultant (The equivalent position in the United Kingdom)

accessory, accompanying, ancillary, associated, attendant, coincident, collateral, combined, concomitant, concurrent, conjoint, correlative, coupled, fellow, helping, incident, joined, joint, menial, ministering, mutual, paired, parallel, satellite, servile, serving, servitorial, simultaneous, twin, waiting