in medical care you have titles such as “Resident” and “Fellow” etc, what do these titles mean and what sort of heiarchy do they possess?
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I’ll use the roadmap to becoming a trauma surgeon because it’s easier to follow in my opinion.
You start out as a **medical student** who is in medical school and is not a doctor yet.
Then after medical school you become an **intern/resident**. Interns are just people in their first year of residency (all interns are residents, not all residents are interns). Residents have officially completed their degree and are medical doctors, but do not have a specialty yet. Residency is where you would learn to become a general surgeon (your specialty in this case).
After completing your general surgery residency, you are a fully trained general surgeon. This means you can be an attending in general surgery. **Attendings** are people who can independently practice in a particular area without anyone supervising them (when you’re a resident you still have to work under an attending even though you are technically a doctor).
In order to become a trauma surgeon you have to be a general surgeon first. If you want to gain additional training in a subspecialty (like trauma) you can become a **fellow**. Your fellowship is where you would learn how to go from being just a general surgeon to being a trauma surgeon as well.
After completing your trauma surgery fellowship you could be a trauma surgery attending.
TL;DR: Attending > fellow > resident/intern > medical student
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