Mara Gordon

"Don't read The House of God," one of my professors told me in my first year of medical school.

He was talking about Samuel Shem's 1978 novel about medical residency, an infamous book whose legacy still looms large in academic medicine. Shem — the pen name of psychiatrist Stephen Bergman — wrote it about his training at Harvard's Beth Israel Hospital (which ultimately became Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) in Boston.

Americans are losing trust in their doctors, says Dr. Marty Makary in his new book, The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care — and How to Fix It. The reason, he argues, is that medical care is just too expensive.

Clinics that take federal Title X family planning funding are adjusting to a new set of rules that limit what health care providers can say to their patients about abortion.

Hey, women: Dr. Jen Gunter wants you to understand your own vagina.

The California gynecologist is on a quest to help women get the facts about their own bodies. It isn't always easy. In an era of political attacks on women's reproductive choices and at a time when Internet wellness gurus are hawking dubious pelvic treatments, getting women evidence-based information about their health can be a challenge, she says.

But Gunter isn't backing down.

Finding a good primary care doctor can feel a little bit like dating. It's awkward. Your expectations are high. You know it's rough out there, but you're still secretly hoping to find the one.

So where do you begin? Just like dating, finding a doctor you click with is all about trusting your intuition.