As an estimated 25 million people will soon gain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, “Nurse practitioners argue they can fill some of those needs if they are granted greater scope of practice.” However, an article in Kaiser Health News reports that a recent study found doctors and nurse...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – When ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is suspected, the absence of Gram staining on a respiratory specimen reliably rules out the diagnosis. On the other hand, a positive Gram stain has a low predictive value for VAP and correlates only moderately with organisms recovered...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Rates of maternal morbidity among women with gestational hypertension are lowest when labor is induced at 38 weeks while neonatal morbidity/mortality rates are lowest with induction at 39 weeks, according to a report in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology online...