What does it mean if a doctor is board certified?

It means they have completed a training program after going to medical school, and they have taken certification examinations to determine their proficiency in a particular specialty of medicine. Generally in the United States, doctors go to medical school for 4 years. After medical school, they will then go on for further post-graduate training at a hospital. This is known as an internship/residency. The intership is their 1st year of training after medical school. After that 1st year, many hospitals consider the doctors to be in their residency. [This term comes from when doctors had to live on the hospital campus and literally be available day or night]. The length of a residency varies from 3 years up to 7 years depending on the specialty. During a doctor's internship & residency, they are employees of the hospital, and are [supposed to be] working under the supervision of an attending [senior] physician. In theory it sounds nice, but it doesn't always work in reality- especially ...  more