What Should I Exactly Major in to Be a Physician Specialized in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation?

Question by penguinnnnnn: what should i exactly major in to be a physician specialized in physical medicine and rehabilitation?
im currently a high school student, goin to be a senior. i want to major in sports medicine; however, there are different areas of that major such as surgeon or athletic training — i dont want to be a therapist or coach…i want to be a doctor who’s specilized in physical medicine and rehabilitation. and as i found, most doctors use sports medicine as a secondary major. then i searched thru collegeboard but there is no such major named ‘orthopedics’ or so. grrr…sound stupid but im really lost. i need to know what is best for me to major in in order to be a physician, not physician assistant. thanks.

Best answer:

Answer by jannsody
I believe that one would first take their pre-med prerequisites, (take the mcat/medical college admissions test), attend medical school, intern and then do a residency in their desired specialty.

For general career info: http://www.bls.gov/oco and can search ‘physicians’ or such. There should be additional links at the end of the entry.

American Board of Medical Specialties: http://www.abms.org

It’s best to look into several different schools due to the competitiveness of the major and each one may have slightly different prereqs and requirements.

For US colleges: http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ

Please steer clear of online, for-profit schools such as penn foster, stratford career, university of phoenix, ITT tech, capella, kaplan, strayer, devry and others as they are merely out to ‘make a profit’: http://www.capellauniversitysucks.us

http://www.ripoffreport.com and can type into search.

Wikipedia should have more info as well, however, Not for school or professional research :) http://www.wikipedia.org

Answer by mistify
You will need to go to medical school. Your actual undergraduate major doesn’t usually matter, but I would reocommend something that covers a lot of the “hard” sciences…especially biology and chemistry.

You’ll then need to complete the application for medical school and take your MCATs. After medical school, you will want to persue a residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation which is typically another 3-4 years after med school. It’s also called “PM&R”.

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