Medical doctors have MDs.
A Doctor of Medicine (MD) is a degree that qualifies graduates to work as physicians. A graduate degree, on the other hand, is any degree where a Bachelor's degree is required of its applicants. In North America, all MDs are graduate degrees but not all graduate degrees are MDs.
MD Education
To earn an MD, a student must go through four years of medical school after completing four years of undergraduate study. Medical school is a specialized form of education that combines lectures, discussion classes, seminars, independent projects and hands-on training, where students actually working in and around hospitals. Classes lean towards an applied science angle -- they aren't just theoretical science classes but rather are classes that teach the connections between their scientific education and medicine itself.
Graduate School
The term "graduate school" is extremely vague. Because it describes every degree whose students have a Bachelor's degree, it describes one-year Master's programs, seven-year PhD programs, medical programs and everything in between. The underlying principle of graduate school, though, is that it builds upon the foundations taught in undergrad and teaches more specialized, higher-level ideas, concepts and skills. Medical school is no exception, but the difference is that medical school refers to one program while graduate school refers to a variety of programs.
PhD Programs
Students who earn a PhD or an MDs have the title "Doctor" when they finish their degrees. However, a PhD graduate is not a doctor -- it is only his title. Indeed, a medical graduate may not be a doctor either. A better term is "physician." A person with an MD is a physician and can practice medicine in a variety of ways depending on his specialty. This is different than a person with a PhD who has researched, written and often published a book-length dissertation on a topic never before studied. This is a feat as great as completing medical school, but it does not result in the same kind of "Doctor."
Professional Degrees
Professional degrees are another variety of graduate school. Master's degrees and PhDs teach students high-level research skills, but they do not focus on applied skills for a specific job. Professional degrees, on the other hand, like MBAs, architecture degrees and medical degrees do. This is a key difference between MDs and other graduate programs -- all MDs are taught the professional skills to work in a specific field while only some graduate students are. A Master's degree in English or Art History, for example, teaches a high level of skill and analysis in these respective subjects, but it does not teach applied skill for a specific job or industry.
Tags: graduate school, medical school, Bachelor degree, four years, graduate degrees, graduate doctor