December 2, 2016 EditionEdition

About half of the 1 million medical doctors in the United States are specialists. Sixty percent of them practice in the eight major areas of psychiatry, surgery, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, radiology, cardiology, oncology and endocrinology/diabetes, where the outcomes are somewhat predictable and quantifiable.

Did you hear the one about the nurse who uses a dog to heal her patients? Well, guess what? It's no joke.

Kathy Noone was new to her job at St. Francis Hospital a few years back when Patricia Verde came to her office, visibly upset about a colon cancer patient. The woman, Verde discovered, had been evicted from her apartment and was spending her nights in a sleeping bag in her sister's basement.

Ellen Andrews has spent the past 17 years as the executive director for the Connecticut Health Policy...

In 2009, Brian Savo, a husband, father of two children, and an active hockey player for most of his life, was diagnosed with ALS (amyotropic lateral sclerosis), a disease that degenerates the nerves that control muscle movement.

Whether she's working in the pulmonary rehab clinic at Hartford Hospital or out in the community administering flu shots to underserved residents, Jenifer Ash never sees patients. She sees partners.

When West Hartford resident and Danish cycling enthusiast Lene Bruun pitched the idea of bringing Cycling Without Age to his nursing home over a year ago, Mark Finkelstein didn't think twice.

As a pediatric surgeon, Dr. Christine Finck sees her share of babies born with esophageal atresia, a defect where the tube between the mouth and stomach fails to connect. Connecticut Children's Medical Center, where Finck works as surgeon-in-chief, treats up to a dozen infants born with these long gaps in their esophagus each year.

They're both named Mary.