Endocrinology deals with diseases affecting the endocrine glands. This includes thyroid disease, adrenal disease, reproductive endocrinology, growth disorders, calcium disorders, pituitary disease, water metabolism and pituitary disease in traumatic brain injury.

Endocrinologists need excellent communication and leadership skills. They must coordinate and maintain multidisciplinary networks for managing endocrine diseases and diabetes mellitus; for example, arranging monthly multidisciplinary meetings with surgery, radiotherapy, pathology and radiology for thyroid cancer. The very nature of endocrine diseases (for example, their impact on other organs and systems in the body) means that an endocrinologist must also be a skillful general physician.

Most endocrinologists look after medical inpatients and participate in the acute medical take, offering expertise in areas such as hypoglycaemia, glycaemic control in patients in intensive care and coronary care units, managing diabetic ketoacidosis, and adrenal or pituitary crises. Thanks to advances in the specialty, endocrinology is based mainly in the outpatient department and sees patients from adolescence to old age. There is an increasing trend to develop specialised, multidisciplinary clinics - for example, obstetric medical, or diabetic foot.

New therapeutic avenues are opening up as molecular biology unlocks many of the mysteries of endocrine disease. Doctors who complete Higher Specialist Training in Endocrinology and Diabetes Mellitus may later wish to subspecialise in endocrinology or diabetes mellitus.