FAQ: Find a Doctor
Question: Where can I find a doctor who specializes in treating specific diseases or conditions?
Answer:
To find doctors who treat specific diseases or conditions, we suggest the following:
Web Sites
Telephone Suggestions
Print Directories
Contact an Author of a Journal Article
Web Sites
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Telephone Suggestions
- Phone your local county or state medical society for names of doctors and their specialties
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/7630.html
- Phone a hospital for names of doctors who treat specific diseases or conditions
- Phone your doctor and ask for a recommendation to a specialist
- Phone your insurance provider for a list of approved doctors and specialists
- Look in your local telephone book under "Physicians," or check an online service like Switchboard.com
http://www.switchboard.com
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Print Directories
- Print directories are often in public, university or medical libraries. Ask a local librarian for assistance or call the NLM National Network of Libraries of Medicine for a local librarian to help you.
http://nnlm.gov/members/
Contact an Author of a Journal Article
Search
PubMed/MEDLINE, http://pubmed.gov, for current medical journal articles on a specific disease or condition. This can help you identify researchers, hospitals and medical schools with certain specialties. Look for the author's contact information. Please note the contact e-mail or mail address for an author may not be up to date, but it is a good way to start. Try the following:
- Search for the author name in PubMed and look for the most recent article where your author is the first author.
To find out more about searching by author name, visit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?highlight=author&rid=helppubmed.section.pubmedhelp.Searching_PubMed#pubmedhelp.Searching_by_author
- Choose the "abstract view" in the Display menu.
- Look for the institution address under the list of author names. This is the affiliation of the primary author at the time the article went to press. Use a Web search engine to find the institution's Web page and look for a staff directory. Sometimes you may be able to find an e-mail address or phone number for a researcher.
- Open a full-text article, if possible. Some full-text articles (especially those in PubMed Central) will list the institutional address of each individual author. This list may also include a name and e-mail address of a designated "correspondent" for that article.
- You can also use the search tools listed above for finding a specialist. For researchers that do not have an M.D. degree, ask your local librarian to check their most current biographical directories or resources for a contact address.
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- Related Questions:
- Finding Consumer Health Information
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/doctor.html