Physician Job Description Templates
Free physician job description templates for small practices: general, primary care, family, staff, and private-practice versions. Download as DOCX.
Physician Job Description Templates
5 free templates for small practices. Download as DOCX or copy-paste.
The physician job description is one most practices copy from a generic one-pager that lists "diagnose and treat patients" and stops there, with no version for the practice setting and no mention of the credential stack a physician needs before they can see an insured patient or write a prescription. A small independent practice that downloads a thin template still has no idea it must verify a state license, secure DEA registration, confirm board certification, obtain the NPI, bind malpractice coverage, run an NPDB query, and complete payer enrollment that routinely takes months, all before the physician becomes billable.
At FirstHR, we build for small independent practices that hire without an HR department, the segment the generic templates ignore. The five templates below cover the role by clinical context and setting: general, primary care, family medicine, staff, and small private practice. Each carries the license, DEA, NPI, board certification, malpractice, and NPDB items as structured fields. Fill in the brackets and post. If you write postings using the common title instead, the doctor job description templates cover the same role, and the guide to writing a job description covers the fundamentals.
What Does a Physician Do?
A physician diagnoses, treats, and helps prevent illness and injury: examining patients, ordering and interpreting diagnostics, prescribing and managing treatment, providing preventive care, and maintaining continuity with a panel of patients. In federal occupational data the role falls under the physician categories including family medicine physicians, who diagnose, treat, and provide preventive care to patients across the lifespan, and the related internal medicine and primary care categories.
For the employer writing the posting, the useful frame is that the clinical core is constant while the context shifts the emphasis: prevention and panel continuity for a primary care physician, lifespan care for a family physician, rounding and call for a staff physician, and business-side participation for a small-practice physician. That is why the templates below differ by clinical context. And if the hire your practice actually needs next is the clinical team around the physician, the nurse templates and medical assistant templates cover those seats with the same structure.
Physician Duties and Responsibilities
Physician duties center on diagnosis and treatment, prevention and patient care, panel continuity, and the documentation and compliance that keep a practice running. The context shifts the weights, an inpatient rotation for a staff physician versus a steady outpatient panel for primary care, but the categories hold. These are the duties grouped the way the templates use them.
A strong posting grounds these in the context with the numbers attached: manage a panel of roughly 1,800 patients seeing 18 to 22 per day, round on the inpatient unit per a 1-in-5 rotation, document in the named EHR within 48 hours. Physicians read postings the way engineers read specs, screening for the operational facts, panel, volume, call ratio, EHR, before considering the prose. For a structured way to scope any role before posting, the guide to defining job responsibilities walks through the process.
Physician vs Doctor vs Surgeon vs PA
The titles around a physician role overlap, and naming the role precisely keeps your posting accurate and searchable. Here is how the most-confused roles relate.
| Role | What sets it apart | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Physician | MD or DO who diagnoses and treats | The precise title for a medical-practice posting |
| Doctor | Common term for a physician | Plain-language postings and broad searches |
| Surgeon | Treats through operative procedures | Surgical specialty roles, named by specialty |
| Physician Assistant (PA) | Practices under physician supervision | A different, supervised clinical role |
If the role is a supervised clinician rather than a physician, or a specialty rather than a general physician, use the matching title and template. The doctor job description templates cover the same role under the common term, the pediatrician templates cover children's care, and the psychiatrist templates cover mental health, each written for that specialty's credentialing and setting.
Which Template Should You Use?
Pick the template by clinical context and practice setting. The clinical core runs through all five, but the duties, the board certification, and the candidates differ enough that the matched version always reads more credibly to physicians. Use this guide to choose.
5 Free Physician Job Description Templates
Download all five as a single Word document or copy individual templates. Each follows the same structure: practice overview, job summary, key responsibilities, required qualifications, compensation, and how to apply, with license, DEA, NPI, board certification, malpractice, and NPDB items as structured fields. Fill in the brackets and post.
Template 1: General Physician (W-2)
The base version: panel-based care, EHR documentation, the call ratio stated, and the credential requirements as structured fields. Start here if no specialized version fits.
Template 2: Primary Care Physician
The primary-care version: panel management, prevention, and care coordination, with board certification in family medicine, internal medicine, or pediatrics.
Template 3: Family Physician (Family Medicine)
The family-medicine version: pediatric-to-geriatric scope, chronic-disease management, and telemedicine, with ABFM board certification or eligibility.
Template 4: Staff Physician (Hospital / Employed)
The employed-system version: rounding or call coverage, NP and PA supervision, the privileges and credentialing committee, and base-plus-wRVU compensation.
Template 5: Small Private Practice Physician
The independent version: a hands-on, wear-multiple-hats role, real autonomy, a partnership track, and a built-in note on the credentialing timeline that governs the start date.
Credentials to Require
Physician hiring runs on a credential stack with no shortcuts, and the posting should name every layer: the state medical license, board certification or eligibility, DEA registration for prescribing, which physicians obtain and renew through the DEA's registration forms and applications, the National Provider Identifier required for billing, malpractice coverage eligibility, and a history query against the National Practitioner Data Bank, the federal repository of malpractice payments and disciplinary actions that hospitals and many practices check as a standard step.
The operational truth small practices learn the hard way is that credentialing is the hiring timeline: primary source verification, privileging where the role rounds, and payer enrollment with every plan the practice bills, the last of which routinely runs 90 to 180 days per payer and gates the date the new physician becomes billable. Compliance layers on top: HIPAA workforce training is due within a reasonable period after onboarding and sooner in stricter states, and hiring must stay job-related and neutral since the EEOC prohibits job advertisements that show a preference based on protected characteristics. Every credential then lives in the employee file with its expiration on a renewal calendar, license, DEA, board cycle, because in medicine the paperwork discipline is the practice's protection. None of this is legal advice; confirm with your state board and an attorney.
Physician Qualifications to Include
Physician qualifications are credential-anchored and verification-heavy, which makes the posting's job precision: every requirement is checkable, and the strong version states each one in the form a candidate can answer with a document.
| Weak requirement | Strong requirement |
|---|---|
| Licensed physician | Active [State] medical license, or clear eligibility to obtain before the start date |
| Board certified | Board certified or board eligible in [specialty], with certification timeline stated for new graduates |
| Prescriptive authority | Active DEA registration and NPI, or eligibility to obtain before start |
| Good standing | Eligible for malpractice coverage and payer credentialing; NPDB history clean or explainable |
| Team player | Comfort documenting in [EHR] within 48 hours and sharing a 1-in-5 call rotation |
Saying board certified or board eligible matters practically: residency graduates are board eligible before they sit the exam, and a posting requiring certification outright excludes the largest pool of available physicians, the finishing residents. Keep every line job-related and neutral throughout, and for the standard sections of a posting, the SHRM job description tools describe a good job description as a plain-language summary of a position's tasks, duties, and responsibilities.
How to Write a Physician Job Description
A strong physician posting takes about 45 minutes, longer than most roles, because the document does double duty: it specifies a credentialed clinical position and it sells the practice against system recruiting. Here is the process the templates are built around. If this is among your first hires, the small business hiring guide covers the steps around the posting itself.
Physician Salary
Physician compensation sits at the top of the wage scale, varies enormously by specialty and setting, and is structured rather than flat, three facts that argue for showing your math in the posting.
The structure matters more than the headline: typical packages run a base salary with productivity compensation tied to work RVUs or collections above a threshold, plus the benefits that function as pay in medicine, malpractice premiums and whether tail coverage is included, CME allowance and days, license dues, PTO, retirement, and at independent practices the partnership economics. Pay also splits sharply by specialty, with primary care and family medicine toward the lower end and procedural and surgical specialties well above the median. A small practice rarely wins a headline-number contest against a health system, and does not need to: the posting that shows its structure lets a candidate compare honestly, and the physicians who value autonomy are reading for exactly that.
Hiring a Physician for a Small Practice
Health systems hire physicians with recruiters, credentialing departments, and compensation analysts. An independent practice does it with the owner and a practice administrator, for the most consequential and procedurally heavy hire the practice will make, in a market that is steadily consolidating away from small practice. Here is how to write the posting and run the hire for that reality.
From Hiring to Onboarding
The job description is step one, and physician onboarding is credentialing-first by necessity: payer enrollment applications submitted the day the contract signs, the state license, DEA, and NPI confirmed, malpractice bound, the NPDB query completed, hospital privileging where the role rounds, and every credential stored with its expiration date on a renewal calendar, because the start date is governed by the slowest payer, not the calendar preference. Alongside it runs the employment layer every hire requires regardless of specialty: the signed contract, Form I-9 within the first days along with the rest of the new hire paperwork, tax forms, and HIPAA and compliance training documented, the sequence the healthcare onboarding guide structures for clinical settings.
Then the integration that decides the first year: EHR training before the first clinic day, the practice's protocols and referral patterns walked through, a ramped schedule for the first weeks, introductions to staff and the local specialist network, and panel-building support, the practice-level patterns covered in healthcare onboarding best practices. Once you have your offer ready, the offer letter template handles the next step, and the employment contract template carries the formal terms a physician hire requires. FirstHR connects the offer, e-signature paperwork, document storage with credential expiration tracking, training checklists, and the onboarding workflow in one place, built for practices without an HR department, working alongside whatever credentialing service runs your payer enrollment. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a physician do?
A physician diagnoses, treats, and helps prevent illness and injury: examining patients, ordering and interpreting diagnostic tests, prescribing medications and treatment, providing preventive care and screenings, counseling patients, referring to specialists, and maintaining continuity with a panel of patients over time. The work and setting shape the role. A general or primary care physician manages a broad outpatient panel with an emphasis on prevention and continuity, a family physician treats patients across the lifespan from pediatrics to geriatrics, a staff physician works within a hospital or employed group with rounding and call, and a small-practice physician adds business-side participation to the clinical work. This page covers the general physician role and offers templates by clinical context and practice setting, since the clinical core is constant while the structure of the job varies.
What is the difference between a physician and a doctor?
In everyday US usage, physician and doctor mean the same thing: a medical professional who holds an MD or DO degree, completed residency, and is licensed to diagnose and treat patients. Physician is the formal title used by most HR systems and job boards, while doctor is the common term and can technically refer to anyone with a doctoral degree, including dentists, podiatrists, and PhDs. For a job description, physician is the more precise title, and it is worth using the specific specialty name when you know it, such as family medicine physician or internal medicine physician, since that is how candidates search. If you are writing a broader posting that uses the common term, the doctor job description templates cover the same role under that title.
What is the difference between a physician and a surgeon?
A physician primarily diagnoses and treats illness through examination, medication, and nonsurgical management, while a surgeon treats conditions through operative procedures. Both are physicians in the broad sense, holding an MD or DO and completing residency, but a surgeon completes surgical training and spends much of their time in the operating room, whereas a general physician, internist, or family physician works mostly in clinic and inpatient settings without operating. When you write the posting, the distinction matters for the title and the credential requirements: a surgical role names the surgical specialty and its board certification, while a general physician role names internal medicine, family medicine, or the relevant nonsurgical specialty. This page covers the nonsurgical physician role; surgical roles are written as their own specialty postings.
What should a physician job description include?
A strong physician job description includes a practice overview, a job summary, key responsibilities, required qualifications and credentials, the employment type, the compensation structure, and how to apply, all matched to the clinical context you are hiring for. List the clinical duties: diagnosis and treatment, preventive care, diagnostics, prescribing, panel management, EHR documentation, and call. Carry the credential requirements as explicit fields, because they are non-negotiable: MD or DO, board certification or eligibility, an active state medical license, DEA registration, an NPI, malpractice eligibility, and a clean or explainable NPDB history. Match the posting to the context, since a general physician, a primary care or family physician, a staff physician, and a small-practice physician emphasize different things. Show compensation as a structure rather than a single number, and note that credentialing governs the real start date.
What credentials does a physician need to be hired?
The non-negotiable stack: an MD or DO degree, completion of an accredited residency, board certification or board eligibility through the relevant board, an active medical license in the state of practice or clear eligibility to obtain one, DEA registration for prescribing controlled substances, a National Provider Identifier for billing, eligibility for malpractice coverage, and a National Practitioner Data Bank history that is clean or explainable. Most settings also require payer credentialing and enrollment before the physician can bill insured patients, and hospital roles require medical staff privileges. The posting should list these explicitly with board certified or board eligible stated, since new residency graduates are board eligible before they test, and request the credential packet, license numbers, DEA, NPI, CV, and complete work history, at the application or offer stage so credentialing can start immediately.
How much does a physician make?
Federal wage data places physicians and surgeons among the highest-paid occupations in the country. The median annual wage was equal to or greater than $239,200 in May 2024, the top of the BLS reporting scale, with about 839,000 physicians and surgeons employed nationally. Pay varies enormously by specialty, with primary care and family medicine toward the lower end and procedural and surgical specialties well above the median, and by geography, employment model, and productivity. Structure matters as much as the number: typical packages are a base salary, often with productivity compensation tied to work RVUs or collections above a threshold, plus the benefits that function as pay in medicine, malpractice premiums with or without tail coverage, CME allowance and days, license dues, PTO, retirement, and at independent practices the partnership economics. Employment of physicians and surgeons is projected to grow about 3 percent through 2034, with roughly 23,600 openings each year.
How do I write a physician job description for a small private practice?
Pick the small-private-practice template, then compete on the things only an independent practice can offer, stated concretely, and build the credentialing timeline into your plan. First, sell the practice honestly: providers, patient population, community tenure, clinical autonomy, and the partnership track with its timeline, because your posting lands next to hospital offers with sign-on bonuses and the differentiation is specificity. American Medical Association survey research shows fewer than half of physicians now work in practices of 10 or fewer, so the autonomy and ownership a small practice offers is genuinely scarce and worth naming. Second, carry the credential requirements as explicit fields, MD or DO, board certified or eligible, state license, DEA, NPI, malpractice, NPDB. Third, treat credentialing as the real timeline: payer enrollment runs 90 to 180 days, so collect the packet at offer and build the start date around enrollment. None of this is legal advice; confirm with your state board and an attorney.
What happens after I hire a physician?
Credentialing runs first and longest: payer enrollment applications submitted the day the contract signs, the state license, DEA, and NPI confirmed, malpractice bound, the NPDB query completed, hospital privileging where the role rounds, every credential stored with its expiration date on a renewal calendar, and the start date built around enrollment completion rather than hope. Then the standard employment layer that exists regardless of specialty: the signed contract, Form I-9 within the first days, tax forms, and HIPAA and compliance training documented, with HIPAA training due within a reasonable period after onboarding and sooner in stricter states. Then the integration that decides the first year: EHR training before the first clinic day, the practice's protocols and referral patterns walked through, a ramped schedule for the first weeks, introductions to staff and local specialists, and panel-building support. FirstHR handles the offer, e-signature paperwork, document storage with credential expiration tracking, training checklists, and the onboarding workflow in one place, built for practices without an HR department, alongside the credentialing process your billing or credentialing service runs. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.