There are not many sick or badly injured children at emergency rooms in rural areas each year. Researchers found rural ER doctors made errors in administering medication - such as giving the wrong dose or the wrong drug altogether - just 3 percent of the time when they used so-called telemedicine to connect with a specialist, Fox News reports.

That compared to an 11 percent error rate when local doctors talked with a specialist by phone and a 13 percent error rate when they didn't consult with a specialist at all.

Dr. James Marcin from the University of California Davis Children's Hospital in Sacramento and his colleagues looked at data on 234 children with severe illnesses and injuries who were seen at one of eight rural hospital ERs in Northern California between 2003 and 2009.

Those rural hospitals were small and the only hospital in their vicinity.

Rural doctors could use a video conferencing unit to consult with pediatric critical care specialists like Marcin whenever they chose.

Telemedicine was used for 73 of the sick or injured children. For another 85 patients, local doctors consulted with a specialist over the phone. For the remaining 76 kids, they did not ask for help.

Among cases when doctors used telemedicine, they gave children a total of 146 medications. Five of those were the wrong drug for the child's condition or were administered incorrectly.

In comparison, there were 18 errors out of 167 medications given to children when doctors consulted a specialist over the phone. And there were 16 errors out of the 128 drugs administered when there was no consultation.