Locking the entrance to the emergency room: there could not have been a more potent image to the final day of St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City. After 160 years, St. Vincent’s closed because of financial problems. It was the only hospital serving Greenwich Village and the last Catholic hospital in Manhattan. The closing of... »
(CNN) – Every time Jade backs into my tiny office, I am impressed. With a skill worthy of a New York taxi driver, she maneuvers her manual wheelchair in reverse into the sliver of space between the exam table and my desk in our crowded city clinic. Despite her paraplegia from a teenage diving accident,... »
In a move that would fit right in with Stalinist governing style, Governor Jan Brewer signed bill SB-1070 into law, making it a state crime to walk the streets of Arizona without papers proving one’s immigration status. A person could be detained by police and charged with a misdemeanor for forgetting their wallet. Let’s only... »
When I published my first book—“Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue”—I got a lot of ribbing from my friends about the title. “Singular Intimacies?” they said. “What’s the book about—French lingerie?” But I wanted a title that would capture the essence of the doctor-patient relationship. It is intimate, but in a unique way. It’s not... »
A recent article in the New York Times noted a steady migration of doctors from private practice to hospital-owned health systems. The main driving force appears to be economic, that it is too difficult to run a business, especially when much of that entails fighting multiple insurance companies for reimbursement. Some of the older physicians... »
The Bellevue Literary Press is honored with the Pulitzer Prize. Paul Harding’s debut novel–Tinkers–won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. The Bellevue Literary Press was founded in 2005 as a sister organization to the Bellevue Literary Review. The BLPress publishes literary and authoritative fiction and nonfiction at the nexus of the arts and... »
Danielle Ofri reviews “Nothing Was The Same” for the Lancet. Kay Redfield Jamison writes movingly of her love for her husband, and chronicles the illnesses that he faced in clear-eyed, heartfelt prose. “The inner lining of the cover of Nothing Was The Same is imprinted with some of the letters between Kay Redfield Jamison... »
