Rita Rubin

Confirmation of President Obama's nominee for Surgeon General is suspended as the debate over an answer to this question continues.

Physicians are no strangers to the pen and have made invaluable contributions to world literature. Here, the story of a 21st-century internist-author who is firmly rooted in both worlds.

“My mother was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. I made a comic strip about it.” The idea: combine the art with the medicine.

When it comes to the prostate, most men in this study couldn’t locate it or identify its function. Translation: patients and physicians don’t speak the same language. Clinicians need to be “bilingual” when they’re talking with patients.

Discussing care decisions and agreeing on how to go forward is a skill that can be learned-by physicians and patients alike.

Emergency contraception is available in drugstore aisles nationwide but the easy access may be at the expense of important family planning education.

The financial impact of health care on patients is not benign.

Expensive sterile injectables seem to get the most attention, but doctors are also scrambling to find plain-Jane pills that cost pennies apiece.