Is a master of medicine still “doctor”? Or “Doctor” or “Dr.”?

Answer

Hello Jan,

A person who has completed his 7-year training in medicine is called a “physician”.
A person who has completed a doctoral training is called a “doctor of medical sciences”.

So you are a doctor (of medical sciences) if you have effectively completed a doctoral training and defended a doctoral thesis. This was decided in a Flemish decree on June 12, 1991.

Before 1991, however, someone who had successfully completed his 7-year training in medicine was called ‘doctor of medicine’. Hence probably the confusion.

So you will probably often find incorrect terms depending on whether the person graduated before 1991 or after 1991.