Appointments, prescriptions, lab requests and invoices all pick a doctor from this register, so it is the second thing to fill in after the hospital record itself. On a clean install the list is empty and every one of those screens offers you nothing, which is exactly why it exists.
The upcoming appointment count answers the question you usually have when you open this list.
Only the name is required
A locum starting on Monday has a name and nothing else on file yet. Department, qualification, phone, email and address are all optional and can be filled in later. Email is checked for duplicates when you give one, because it is the closest thing the record has to an identifier for a person.
Departments come with the register
A doctor belongs to a department, and the department list is a screen of its own. Renaming one carries its doctors with it in a single step, because the doctor record stores the department by name rather than by a hidden id.
Each row shows how many doctors are in that department before you rename or remove it.
If you are upgrading from an older install, every department your doctors already use will show up as unlisted, because it was typed into a free text box before this screen existed. One button adopts them all onto the list so they can be managed properly from then on.
A doctor with appointments on file stays
The appointment record points at the doctor by id, so deleting the row would leave every past appointment pointing at nothing. The system refuses and tells you why. Rename the record or mark them inactive instead. The same rule protects the medicine catalogue, the test catalogue and the service price list.
What is not here
There is no rota or shift roster. A doctor’s availability is expressed by the appointments booked against them, and the day view on the appointment screen is how you read it. If you need a published rota, tell us what it has to produce and we can talk about it.
See it rather than read about it. The doctor and department screens are in the user guide.
The user guide walks the whole system in the order you would meet it, and the screenshots page has every screen. The source is on GitHub under the GPL v3.