Difference Wiki

Doctor vs. Nurse

There are several reasons of why a doctor is different from a nurse. The main difference lies in the degree. A doctor has MD or undergraduate degree, Moreover, a doctor might be DO as well. DO stands for osteopathic medicine. On the contrary, nurse has an undergraduate nursing degree. A nurse could also have degree in another field and later on could take nursing training in a program of master's degree. In case of medicine, there are no such twists and turns. You need a a degree of M.B.B.S to be called a doctor.

Key Differences

A nurse is suppose to keep tabs on follow up orders given buy doctor.
Doctors do not measure vitals of patients, it is the job of a nurse to do it every single day.
Janet White
Dec 22, 2015
A nurse is suppose to keep patient's records in check and balance.
Aimie Carlson
Dec 22, 2015
Physical appearance of a doctor is different than a nurse. A doctor might wear scrubs, nurse does not.
Doctors (surgeons) operate, a nurse does not.
Doctors could write prescriptions, nurse could not.
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Doctors could make up a provisional diagnosis, a nurse does not.
Janet White
Dec 22, 2015

Doctor and Nurse Definitions

Doctor

A person who is licensed to practice medicine and has trained at a school of medicine or a school of osteopathic medicine; a physician.

Nurse

A person trained to provide medical care for the sick or disabled, especially one who is licensed and works in a hospital or physician's office.

Doctor

Any of certain other healthcare professionals, such as a dentist, optometrist, chiropractor, podiatrist, or veterinarian.

Nurse

A person employed to take care of a young child.

Doctor

A practitioner of alternative medicine or folk medicine who does not have traditional medical credentials.
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Nurse

A woman employed to suckle children other than her own; a wet nurse.

Doctor

A person who has earned the highest academic degree, usually a PhD, awarded by a college or university in a specified discipline.

Nurse

One that serves as a nurturing or fostering influence or means
"Town life is the nurse of civilization" (C.L.R. James).

Doctor

A person awarded an honorary degree by a college or university.

Nurse

(Zoology) A worker ant or bee that feeds and cares for the colony's young.

Doctor

Abbr. Dr. Used as a title and form of address for a person holding the degree of doctor.
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Nurse

To serve as a nurse for
Nursed the patient back to health.

Doctor

Roman Catholic Church An eminent theologian.

Nurse

To cause or allow to take milk from the breast or teat
A mother nursing her baby.
Whales nursing their young.

Doctor

A rig or device contrived for remedying an emergency situation or for doing a special task.

Nurse

To try to cure by special care or treatment
Nurse a cough with various remedies.

Doctor

(Informal) To give medical treatment to
"[He] does more than practice medicine. He doctors people. There's a difference" (Charles Kuralt).

Nurse

To treat carefully, especially in order to prevent pain
He nursed his injured knee by shifting his weight to the other leg.

Doctor

To repair, especially in a makeshift manner; rig.

Nurse

To manage or guide carefully; look after with care; foster
Nursed her business through the depression.

Doctor

To falsify or change in such a way as to make favorable to oneself
Doctored the evidence.

Nurse

To bear privately in the mind
Nursing a grudge.

Doctor

To add ingredients so as to improve or conceal the taste, appearance, or quality of
Doctor the soup with a dash of sherry.

Nurse

To consume slowly, especially in order to conserve
Nursed one drink all evening.

Doctor

To alter or modify for a specific end
Doctored my standard speech for the small-town audience.

Nurse

To serve as a nurse.

Doctor

(Baseball) To deface or apply a substance to (the ball) in violation of the rules in order to throw a pitch with extraordinary movement
Was ejected because he doctored the ball with a piece of sandpaper.

Nurse

To take milk from the breast or teat; suckle
The baby is nursing. Puppies nurse for a few weeks.

Doctor

To practice medicine.

Nurse

To feed an offspring from the breast or teat
A mother who's nursing.
What to feed cows when they're nursing.

Doctor

A physician; a member of the medical profession; one who is trained and licensed to heal the sick or injured. The final examination and qualification may award a doctor degree in which case the post-nominal letters are D.O., DPM, M.D., DMD, DDS, in the US or MBBS in the UK.
If you still feel unwell tomorrow, see your doctor.

Nurse

(archaic) A wet nurse.

Doctor

A person who has attained a doctorate, such as a Ph.D. or Th.D. or one of many other terminal degrees conferred by a college or university.

Nurse

A person (usually a woman) who takes care of other people’s young.
They hired a nurse to care for their young boy.

Doctor

A veterinarian; a medical practitioner who treats non-human animals.

Nurse

A person trained to provide care for the sick.
The nurse made her rounds through the hospital ward.

Doctor

A nickname for a person who has special knowledge or talents to manipulate or arrange transactions.

Nurse

(figurative) One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, or fosters.
Eton College has been called "the chief nurse of England's statesmen".

Doctor

(obsolete) A teacher; one skilled in a profession or a branch of knowledge; a learned man.

Nurse

(horticulture) A shrub or tree that protects a young plant.

Doctor

(dated) Any mechanical contrivance intended to remedy a difficulty or serve some purpose in an exigency.
The doctor of a calico-printing machine, which is a knife to remove superfluous colouring matter
The doctor, or auxiliary engine, also called "donkey engine"

Nurse

(nautical) A lieutenant or first officer who takes command when the captain is unfit for his place.

Doctor

A fish, the friar skate.

Nurse

A larva of certain trematodes, which produces cercariae by asexual reproduction.

Doctor

A ship's cook.

Nurse

A nurse shark or dogfish.

Doctor

(transitive) To act as a medical doctor to.
Her children doctored her back to health.

Nurse

(transitive) To breastfeed: to feed (a baby) at the breast; to suckle.
She believes that nursing her baby will make him strong and healthy.

Doctor

To act as a medical doctor.

Nurse

(intransitive) To breastfeed: to be fed at the breast.

Doctor

(transitive) To make (someone) into an (academic) doctor; to confer a doctorate upon.

Nurse

(transitive) To care for (someone), especially in sickness; to tend to.
She nursed him back to health.

Doctor

(transitive) To physically alter (medically or surgically) a living being in order to change growth or behavior.
They doctored their apple trees by vigorous pruning, and now the dwarfed trees are easier to pick.
We may legally doctor a pet to reduce its libido.

Nurse

(transitive) To treat kindly and with extra care.
She nursed the rosebush and that season it bloomed.

Doctor

(transitive) To genetically alter an extant species.
Mendel's discoveries showed how the evolution of a species may be doctored.

Nurse

(transitive) To manage with care and economy.

Doctor

(transitive) To alter or make obscure, as with the intention to deceive, especially a document.
To doctor the signature of an instrument with intent to defraud is an example of forgery.

Nurse

(transitive) To drink slowly, to make it last.
Rob was nursing a small beer.

Doctor

(transitive) To adulterate, drug, or poison (drink).

Nurse

(transitive) To foster, to nourish.

Doctor

To take medicine.

Nurse

To hold closely to one's chest
Would you like to nurse the puppy?

Doctor

A teacher; one skilled in a profession, or branch of knowledge; a learned man.
One of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Macciavel.

Nurse

To strike (billiard balls) gently, so as to keep them in good position during a series of shots.

Doctor

An academical title, originally meaning a man so well versed in his department as to be qualified to teach it. Hence: One who has taken the highest degree conferred by a university or college, or has received a diploma of the highest degree; as, a doctor of divinity, of law, of medicine, of music, or of philosophy. Such diplomas may confer an honorary title only.

Nurse

One who nourishes; a person who supplies food, tends, or brings up; as: (a) A woman who has the care of young children; especially, one who suckles an infant not her own. (b) A person, especially a woman, who has the care of the sick or infirm.

Doctor

One duly licensed to practice medicine; a member of the medical profession; a physician.
By medicine life may be prolonged, yet deathWill seize the doctor too.

Nurse

One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, fosters, or the like.
The nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise.

Doctor

Any mechanical contrivance intended to remedy a difficulty or serve some purpose in an exigency; as, the doctor of a calico-printing machine, which is a knife to remove superfluous coloring matter; the doctor, or auxiliary engine, called also donkey engine.

Nurse

A lieutenant or first officer, who is the real commander when the captain is unfit for his place.

Doctor

The friar skate.

Nurse

A peculiar larva of certain trematodes which produces cercariæ by asexual reproduction. See Cercaria, and Redia.

Doctor

To treat as a physician does; to apply remedies to; to repair; as, to doctor a sick man or a broken cart.

Nurse

To nourish; to cherish; to foster
Sons wont to nurse their parents in old age.
Him in Egerian groves Aricia bore,And nursed his youth along the marshy shore.

Doctor

To confer a doctorate upon; to make a doctor.

Nurse

To bring up; to raise, by care, from a weak or invalid condition; to foster; to cherish; - applied to plants, animals, and to any object that needs, or thrives by, attention.
By what hands [has vice] been nursed into so uncontrolled a dominion?

Doctor

To tamper with and arrange for one's own purposes; to falsify; to adulterate; as, to doctor election returns; to doctor whisky.

Nurse

To manage with care and economy, with a view to increase; as, to nurse our national resources.

Doctor

To practice physic.

Nurse

To caress; to fondle, as a nurse does.

Doctor

A licensed medical practitioner;
I felt so bad I went to see my doctor

Nurse

One skilled in caring for young children or the sick (usually under the supervision of a physician)

Doctor

(Roman Catholic Church) a title conferred on 33 saints who distinguished themselves through the othodoxy of their theological teaching;
The Doctors of the Church greatly influenced Christian thought down to the late Middle Ages

Nurse

A woman who is the custodian of children

Doctor

Children take the roles of doctor or patient or nurse and pretend they are at the doctor's office;
The children explored each other's bodies by playing the game of doctor

Nurse

Try to cure by special care of treatment, of an illness or injury;
He nursed his cold with Chinese herbs

Doctor

A person who holds Ph.D. degree from an academic institution;
She is a doctor of philosophy in physics

Nurse

Maintain (a theory, thoughts, or feelings);
Bear a grudge
Entertain interesting notions
Harbor a resentment

Doctor

Alter and make impure, as with the intention to deceive;
Sophisticate rose water with geraniol

Nurse

Serve as a nurse; care for sick or handicapped people

Doctor

Give medical treatment to

Nurse

Treat carefully;
He nursed his injured back by liyng in bed several hours every afternoon
He nursed the flowers in his garden and fertilized them regularly

Doctor

Restore by replacing a part or putting together what is torn or broken;
She repaired her TV set
Repair my shoes please

Nurse

Give suck to;
The wetnurse suckled the infant
You cannot nurse your baby in public in some places

Who is Doctor?

A doctor is the one who could write prescriptions and give orders, he has the full command over his patient. He observes, examine and treat the patient, taking full responsibility of his patient. There are further post graduate degrees as well and a doctor could specialize in various fields lie orthopedics, gynecology, pediatrics, dermatology, general surgery and much more. He could either become a surgeon or could do MD and practice medicine. In medicine, again there are various fields like chest medicine, abdominal medicine and many more. Doctors make more important decisions in a hospital, deciding about further management plans of a patients and follow-ups as well.

Who is Nurse?

Talking about a nurses, they could also have a master’s degree. Doctors sued to prescribe medications but now days trend is changing, even nurses are writing prescriptions for patients but these are well trained, advanced-practice nurses. Nurses are known to be limbs of a doctor in a hospital, doctors can’t really go on without them. They are a great helping hand. They have got sills. Injecting medication, catheter insertion, maintaining IV lines, taking vitals, maintaining input output charts, checking files of patients, keeping tabs on the follow up orders given by their doctor, they manage every thing with so much ease.

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