Articles & Media
Sometimes, Doctors Find Answers Far Off the Charts
Sometimes it is only when the patient is halfway out the door that the important information spills out. The “hand on the doorknob” phenomenon is well known in medicine. More
At a Bustling City Clinic, Esperanto Would Come In Handy
Despite three long years of high school French, the best I could come up with was “Je m’appelle Dr. Ofri.” More
A Literary Review at Bellevue? Believe It
“Just tell me a story,” Dr. Danielle Ofri admonishes her medical students and interns at morning rounds. To Dr. Ofri, an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital Center, a part-time writer and the editor in chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, every patient’s history is a mystery story, a narrative that unfolds full of surprises, exposing the vulnerability at the human core. More
Book Club Guides
Have a book club? Looking for something different? Beacon Press now offers book club guides for all of Danielle’s books. There is also a book club guide for “The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review” that is also a full medical humanities curriculum. Check them out and share with friends. What Doctors Feel Singular Intimacies … More
Interview for “A Sweet Life”
by Jane Kokernak “A Sweet Life” Danielle Ofri is a physician at New York’s Bellevue Hospital and co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bellevue Literary Review. Her twin roles are inextricable, and in both medicine and arts and letters she has illuminated how illness has meaning, in an individual’s life and in our culture. In the hospital … More
Hospital Rankings: Bulk and Bunk
Every year the U.S. New & World Report publishes its rankings of the nation’s top 50 hospitals. Hospital administrators await this top 50 report with a tension and fervor that rivals the NFL first-draft pick. What’s inside the sausage of hospital rankings? More
St. Vincent’s Hospital (1849-2010)
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 … More
Immigration and Health Care
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. More
A Singularly Intimate Moment
When I published my first book—“Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevueâ€â€”I got a lot of ribbing from my friends about the title. “Singular Intimacies?†they said. “What’s the book about—French lingerie?†More
The End of Private Practice?
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 … More
Bellevue Makes Literary History!
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 the sciences, … More
Memoir of Lost Love
Kay Redfield Jamison writes movingly of her love for her husband, and chronicles the illnesses that he faced in clear-eyed, heartfelt prose. Danielle Ofri reviews her book for The Lancet. More
NPR: Medical Translation
Danielle is featured on an NPR story about medical translation in hospitals. In this photo she is using a special “language phone” with two handsets. She and the patient can speak to each other directly, with a remote interpreter providing simultaneous translation. (photo from WNYC website). Listen here: More
Leonard Lopate Show WNYC
Listen to Danielle Ofri interviewed by Leonard Lopate on WNYC FM 93.9 about her book “Medicine in Translation” and the ins and outs of medical care in America today. More
Dance and Medicine
It was on a desolate winter evening that I escaped from Bellevue. I plunged the last IV of my day into someone’s vein and then hopped on an M-15 bus uptown, pressing my subway token into the slot with both anxiety and relief. I was in the second year of my internal medicine residency training, the middle year, which is marked by what is charitably called a “dip†in motivation. More accurately, it is a pit, a chasm, an abyss, a Stygian marsh. More
