Schema.org Implementation: "Physician" vs. "Person"

[mudbugmedia]

Hey all,

I'm looking to implement Schema tagging for a local business and am unsure of whether to use "Physician" or "Person" for a handful of doctors. Though "Physician" seems like it should be the obvious answer, Schema.org states that it should refer to "A doctor's office" instead of a physician.

The properties used in "Physician" seem to apply to a physician's practice, and not an actual physician. Properties are sourced from the "Thing", "Place", "Organization", and "LocalBusiness" schemas, so I'm wondering if "Person" might be a more appropriate implementation since it allows for more detail (affiliations, awards, colleagues, jobTitle, memberOf), but I wanna make sure I get this right.

Also, I'm wondering if the "Physician" schema allows for properties pulled from the "Person" schema, which I think would solve everything.

For reference:

http://schema.org/Person

http://schema.org/Physician

Thanks, everyone! Let me know how off-base my strategy is, and how I might be able to tidy it up.

[Yanbo]

Hi,

It's really hard to pick right option in these kind of situations since there isn't right answer There are perfectly good arguments for choosing both options and there isn't clear definition on what would classify something for one schema and not for another.

Best advice I can give you is to go with what feels right to you.

Kind regards

Bojan

[mudbugmedia]

My plan was to implement "medicalOrganization" in the footer of every page to define the company, as opposed to "Physician", as it's a larger group with 16 locations.

Maybe my assumption is wrong, but it seems like "Physician" should refer to an individual practitioner's business; because it inherits properties from "Thing", "Place", "Organization" and "LocalBusiness", my thinking was that "medicalOrganization" would be more appropriate for the group.

That said, if "Physician" inherits properties from "medicalOrganization" (via subClassOf), would "Physician" be the best way to mark up / define the group?

Thanks for the help – I like the idea, and will probably incorporate "members" into the "medicalOrganization" or "Physician" schema, whichever seems to be most appropriate / relevant.

[Yanbo]

Hi

You can use "Physician" to describe medical office and under its attribute "members" you can post list of doctors as "Person",

Kind regards

Bojan