The typical healer in Tortall would have a small-to-moderate Gift that was suited to healing things. With a smaller Gift, they would usually be able to heal and only heal.
Minor healers, herb women, and hedgewizards cared for small city neighborhoods or villages. It was their job to take care of childbirth, accidents, and illness. They would usually only refer their patient to another healer if that person had money or importance.
Healers worked for money--there was no state funding for hospitals, only religious healing orders - so a healer might turn down one client in favour of a better paying one. However, certified healers and those with better teachers usually swore an oath that they would help anyone in need.
Use of a Healer's Gifts
A healer was supposed to know much more than simply how to use magic. Just like doctors today, healers had to study anatomy, nutrition, how diseases worked, and herbal remedies. Quite often a healer had limited amounts of Gift to work with, so they would use herbal remedies and common sense first. It was also preferred not to use the Gift because when somebody is healed with magic a lot, they develop a resistance to it. Using the Gift without considering other options could hurt the patient more than help them.
Note that many healers did not have the Gift and still did quite well. Your healer does not need to have the Gift.
On the other hand, the Gift opens new opportunities to medicine that we do not have even now. Using their magic, a healer could see the life energies in a patient, and the places where this energy did not flow. A magical nudge in precisely the right place could calm false labor or stop a seizure--if it didn't kill the patient by accident first. A tiny nudge to the spine to calm a person's nervous system and end a seizure could also accidentally injure their spine and paralyze them for life.
Healers would NOT use their Gift on random friends or strangers unless it was dire--if the person was dying or going into labor with severe complications. Also, they wouldn't be able to heal everything. A doctor always loses some of their patients, no matter what. Death and injury are unavoidable.
After being healed, a person is typically tired. This is because most of the energy doesn't come from the healer, but the patient. The healer is also usually tired because it uses much of their Gift and a healer usually only has so much Gift to spend. (Note: characters with large amounts of the Gift are restricted.) The healing process can also be considerably painful at time, especially when dealing with injuries such as broken bones and noses.
Education, Credentials, and Places of Work
Consider the level of ability, and the class in society which your character was born into. A commoner would probably not go to University and a noble would get better teaching than a local herb-healer. As well, someone with a strong Gift would not go through a few lessons and be ready to start like someone with a small Gift would. So, here are the different types of training:
University-Taught Mages and Healers:
This sort of teaching was usually reserved for rich merchants or nobles who had both magic and money in large amounts. Occasionally a noble with absolute gobs of money (i.e. their grandfather donated enough money to the university that the dean could buy a new villa in Tyra) might be admitted without a Gift. Steelsings has only seen about one or two characters that were trained at a University, because they usually get work for a merchant or noble house or stay on that the university to do research.
Locally Trained Healers
Healers of this sort are taught father-son, mother-daughter, or by the local low-level healer, and are low-level healers themselves.
Temple-Trained Healers
Commoners with larger Gifts or un-Gifted yet rich nobles or merchants would be sent to a temple at the closest city. If their gift was powerful enough that they might become an important healer they were sent to the City of the Gods in Tortall. These healers usually continue to work in temples, which often serve the common people free of charge or at a minimal charge, depending on their patron god or goddess. Temple healers are also typically religious and worship the god or goddess of their temple.
There are four levels to temple training:
Novice: A novice is the lowest of the low- novices are the newest trainees who can't do much of anything without a teacher. A novice stays a novice for three to five years, usually. This is about level with a premed student to about the third year of medical school. Novices in religious orders are not allowed to hold political offices or titles of nobility, or be married.
Adept: An adept is a step up from a novice- they are able to do basic tasks like healing cuts and sewing stitches under the watchful eye of an older and more experienced healer. Adepts are adepts for three to five years; most people get out of Adept-class at about age twenty to twenty-five.
Journeyman: A Journeyman isn't equitable with anything in "real life" and isn't really mentioned much in the Tortall books. However, a Journeyman is certified to be a capable healer who can work without supervision. Most healers stay Journeymen for the rest of their lives. The name comes because a Journeyman is supposed to leave the temple in which they were trained and work at another temple.
Master: Not many healers try for Masterclass level. This is more the sort of thing one wants to do when your character wants to found a hospital or take a position in administration of an existing hospital, university, or healing temple. Most mages and healers become Master-class at about age thirty-five. 35. You heard me. If you want a master mage or healer, get an older character.
Stereotypes to Avoid
The main character stereotype that happens with this sort of character is the Super Healer. The Super Healer is usually young- seventeen is a favorite age- but he or she may be older or younger. The Super Healer is so compassionate it's painful. They have enough Gift that the university of Carthak should be begging them to enroll, but they were trained by an elderly and less powerful hedgewizard. The Super Healer is never suspected of necromancy, though they can heal anything they want, including death. Also, the Super Healer has a knack for insisting on healing complete strangers with similar tragic pasts. AVOID THIS CHARACTER AT ALL COSTS.