![[Politico] Michigan Senate hopeful El-Sayed calls himself a ‘physician’ but has little history treating patients](https://external-preview.redd.it/H2RDx3LCp-tptsPgVZHn71OeeRwYsc2a28o2x0hBwYs.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=dbc3765b5a33e2c01c2f3b0ef46ca61b8191b08b)
[Politico] Michigan Senate hopeful El-Sayed calls himself a ‘physician’ but has little history treating patients
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/12/abdul-el-sayed-doctor-physician-00916389
A new article from Politico argues that Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary, is misrepresenting his credentials by referring to himself as a physician. El-Sayed obtained an MD from Columbia. It appears he never applied for residency but instead went and obtained a PhD in public health from Oxford. He subsequently worked at Columbia as an epidemiology professor and led the Detroit public health department but has never attended residency or practiced medicine.
While r/medicine has spent years debating whether APPs should be allowed to refer to themselves as “doctor” to patients, apparently the general public has a more pressing concern: should an MD be able to refer to themselves as a physician in non-clinical settings?
As a side note, the actual reporting on the piece is quite poor. Politico has absolutely no idea what medical school entails: “El-Sayed’s [only] hands-on experience treating patients appears to be a short clinical rotation called a sub-internship at a small hospital in Manhattan for four weeks at the end of medical school”