When nurse staffing levels fell below target levels in a large hospital, more patients died, a new study discovered.

Ken Jackson travels by horse or helicopter to provide prenatal care for a small, remote Indian village.

About 16% of family doctors used online scheduling in 2009, up from 6% in 2005, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. Most do it on their own or through health systems in which they work.

There are enough children's doctors in the United States, they just work in the wrong places, a new study finds. Some wealthy areas are oversaturated with pediatricians and family doctors. Other parts of the nation have few or none.

MDLiveCare, Zipnosis, virtuwell and the like prescribe mainly antibiotics and antihistamines, not Viagra, and they say they can take as detailed a medical history online or over the phone as most doctors do at an office visit. With that information, company officials say, their doctors and nurse practitioners can decide whether to treat patients or refer them for a hands-on workup.

Online companies with names such as "MDLiveCare" and "RingADoc" are diagnosing and treating common conditions such as allergies and the flu over the Internet or on the phone, forcing state regulators to revisit decade-old rules about what constitutes a doctor/patient relationship.

The notion of doctors making house calls harkens back to an era before HMOs, medical centers and outpatient surgery centers. Those visits offer insights not available during a 15-minute office visit. Doctors learn more about a patient's lifestyle, eating habits, their ability to take medicine and exercise.

Though doctors are trained to "do no harm," their power to write prescriptions for narcotics plays a major role in pain pill addiction.

U.S. doctors must become more attuned to Islamic beliefs and values that could affect the physician-patient relationship with Muslim Americans, researchers found in a recently released study. This will become even more important as the U.S. Muslim population of nearly 7 million continues to grow, they found.

Doctors have sharply slashed some financial ties to drug companies, thanks to increased scrutiny about relationships that critics say improperly influence medical treatment, a survey suggests.

Artist Ted Meyer's colorful mono-prints of real scars, and accompanying testimony, help his subjects tell the story of their life-changing injury or illness.

Fourteen years since Californians passed the first-in-the-nation medical marijuana law, pot is not just for the sick. Hundreds of medical marijuana doctors, operating without official scrutiny, have helped make it available to nearly anyone who wants it.

Think you entered the digital health age when your doctor switched from paper charts to computerized medical records? Think again: An e-chart stored in one doctor's computer too often can't be read by another's across town.

To reduce medical errors, new doctors will get stricter supervision and shorter work shifts. But the American Medical Student Association says it doesn't do enough to help sleep-deprived docs.

Known as the "American Nobels," the $250,000 honors also go to those who restored sight to the blind and treated children with blood disorders.

Public information about U.S. doctors' education, certification and malpractice claims may not be enough to help patients determine whether a physician provides high-quality care, a new study suggests.

Junior doctors quickly learn that exposure to patients' germs is part of the job, but a study suggests many are returning the favor. More than half of doctors in training said in a survey that they'd shown up sick to work, and almost one-third said they'd done it more than once.

Doctors defend the practice, but critics point to the potential for financial abuses.

When doctors make mistakes, admitting the error, saying "I'm sorry" and offering compensation may go a long way toward preventing malpractice lawsuits, new research shows.