An obstetrician-gynecologist, or OB-GYN, has expertise in female reproductive health, pregnancy, and childbirth. Some OB-GYNs offer a wide range of general health services like your primary care doctor. Others focus on the medical care of the female reproductive system. OB-GYNs also provide routine medical services and preventive screenings.

Obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYN) are physicians with special knowledge, skills, and professional capability in the medical and surgical care of the female reproductive system and associated disorders. This distinguishes them from other physicians and enables them to serve as consultants to other physicians and as primary physicians for women. Over the years of practice, each obstetrician-gynecologist builds upon this broad knowledge and skills base and may develop a unique type of practice and changing professional focus. Such diversity contributes to high-quality healthcare for women.

Resident education in obstetrics-gynecology must include four years of accredited, clinically-oriented graduate medical education, which must be focused on reproductive healthcare and ambulatory primary healthcare for women, including health maintenance, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, consultation, and referral.

There are also subspecialties in obstetrics and gynecology, which require additional training: maternal-fetal medicine specialists are obstetricians/gynecologists who are prepared to care for and to consult on patients with high-risk pregnancies, and reproductive endocrinologists are capable of managing complex problems related to reproductive endocrinology and infertility, including aspects of assisted reproduction, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).