First off, i would highly recomend imagenomic noiseware pro
http://www.imagenomic.com/products.aspx i'm sure with a bit of alternative searching if you know what i mean, you will find it. But its not the total answer, when you use median and gausian try it on channels ...ie have a look at the r,g and b channels and decide where the majority of the noise is coming from(often blue) by attacking the noise on each channel you wont soften the overall image as much.
i think the single most helpful tip i could give you is use the blur brush but set the mode to luminosity to work on the skin tones, that way you wont blur up the detail but it will nicely blend the luminosity levels.careful near high contrast areas like somebody standing in front of a white background. most jpeg overcomression can be blended with this method. what version of photoshop you using blahman? PS CS2 ver9 ...filter ..noise....reduce noise is a nice addition.
use .sharpen.. unsharp mask to pull back some edge detail don't set the radius to high tho else it will look like you traced around it with a HB pencil, 1.2 being a starter value increas with image size rarely will you go over 4 with a large image even. the rest is combo's of color balance (ctrl+b) levels (ctrl+L) selective color . image... adjust ..selective color.
to summarize the noiseware plugin is great for initial removal of bulk noise the harder work with the blur brush set to luminosity, and color correction which i belive you have a handle on already juudging from your previous restores
