doctors

Twice as Hard

Danielle Ofri is joined by BLR Board Member Ashley McMullen to welcome Jasmine Brown for a timely conversation about the interplay of racism and sexism within medicine, shedding light on a powerful history of Black women physicians that has long been invisible. Jasmine Brown is the author of Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century. More

Women in Medicine Transforming Healthcare

Danielle Ofri and Lucy Lester discuss the history and the current status of women in medicine, and how women have transformed healthcare.
Co-sponsored by AMWA (American Women’s Medical Association) & WIMLF (Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation). More

NPR’s Morning Edition

NPR’s Neda Ulaby interviews Danielle Ofri and Celeste Ng on “Morning Edition” about BLR’s 20th Anniversary (and how a literary journal came to be founded in a storied public hospital). More

How to Improve the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Danielle Ofri talks with Elena Sung from the “Power of the Patient Project” about how to improve the doctor-patient relationshipe. More

The Doctors Blackwell

Few people today know much about what Elizabeth Blackwell actually did, and fewer are even aware of her younger sister Emily, by far the more accomplished clinician. More

Coronavirus: Why Doctors and Nurses Are Anxious and Angry

The story of the coronavirus is still being written. The stories of polio, Ebola, H.I.V. and measles — all, alas, still in progress — remind us that public health is an ongoing, never-let-’em-up-from-the-mat effort. Narrow vision, data ignorance, image-conscious decision-making and truncated memory are the very elements of contagion. No amount of Purell can sanitize that. More

Flying Solo

What happens when you are the only doctor in the auditorium? Or the only doctor on the plane? What do you do when the only stethoscope available rivals the toy one made by Fisher-Price for kids? More

The Covenant

Burnout among doctors appears to be at epidemic proportions these days, with concomitant gushing prescriptions for wellness and resilience. But in reality, most doctors are not burned out: most love taking care of patients and want nothing more than to be able to do just that. The source of the agony is the profession—or rather the corporatization of the profession… More

EMR Ménage-à-Trois

EMRs have both breathtaking assets and snarling annoyances. But what started out as a tool — a database to store information more efficiently than the paper chart — has inserted itself as a member of the medical team. What used to be a tango between the doctor and patient is now a troika. More

Empathy in the Age of the EMR

We doctors have been reduced to tools of mere data entry. A higher being might peek into our exam room and be unable to distinguish the doctor from the sphygmomanometer. There is at least one upside to this mess, however. The aggressiveness of the EMR’s incursion into the doctor-patient relationship has forced us to declare our loyalties: are we taking care of patients or are we taking care of the EMR? More

The Daily Exploitation of Medical Staff

Corporate medicine has milked just about all the “efficiency” it can out of the system. With mergers and streamlining, it has pushed the productivity numbers about as far as they can go. But one resource that seems endless — and free — is the professional ethic of medical staff members. More

Perchance to Think

In the pressurized world of contemporary outpatient medicine, there is simply no time to think. With every patient, we doctors race to cover the bare minimum, sprinting in subsistence-level intellectual mode because that’s all that’s sustainable. More

A Tense Moment in the ER

The hospital, by definition, is a stressful place for patients and families unsettled by the vulnerabilities of the human body. Add in issues of race, class, gender, power dynamics, economics, and long wait times, and you have the ingredients for combustion just hankering for tinder. More

A Doctor’s Responsibility

“Excuse me, sir,” I imagine the scenario playing out, “do you mind if I barge in on your life to see if I can save your life?” At what point does concern morph into presumption? The line between kindly interventions and condescending ones can be perilously thin. More

Patients vs Paperwork

Like some virulent bacteria doubling on the agar plate, the EMR grows more gargantuan with each passing month, requiring ever more (and ever more arduous) documentation to feed the beast. It’s time to take action. More

Books by Danielle Ofri

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