Articles & Media
Unknown Asian Male–NPR
Commentator Dr. Danielle Ofri tells the story of a patient who was found singing John Denver songs and appeared to be mentally disturbed. But he was simply a victim of poisoning. He’d been given scopalamine, which thieves use to cause amnesia in victims. And luckily, there’s an antidote. More
Judgement Call
Is the quality of a judgment call determined only by the outcome? Or does it stand alone, with the outcome irrelevant? More
Prescribing Good Health–NPR
Commentator Dr. Danielle Ofri tells of one of her patients who was in apparent good health, but who was stuck in low wage job. She knew from statistics that people with such jobs have greater risk of dying early. So she tutored him in his SATs so he could get into college. More
Tools of the Trade
I was ashamed to admit it, but I was perversely thankful for the numerous comatose patients on my service because they made rounds faster and left more time to concentrate on the active GI bleeders, the patients in DKA, the ones with gram-negative septicemia, and the ones who spoke English. More
NEJM review of “Singular Intimacies”
Ofri is a gifted writer. Her vignettes ring with truth, and for any physician or patient who knows the dramas of a big-city hospital they will evoke tears, laughter, and memories. Indeed, any reader, physician or not, will find in Singular Intimacies the essence of becoming and being a doctor. More
Boston Globe review of “Singular Intimacies”
With health insurance and malpractice costs rising, and with patient satisfaction becoming an oxymoron, along comes the compassionate Danielle Ofri with ”Singular Intimacies.” Her writing tumbles forth with color and emotion. She demonstrates an ear for dialogue, humility about the limits of her medical training, and an extraordinary capacity to be touched by human suffering. More
Boston Globe Book Review: “Singular Intimacies”
Danielle Ofri’s ”Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue” captivated me so much. Ofri is fascinating not just because she’s an attending physician at Bellevue, ”the oldest and craziest hospital in the nation,” but because she’s also the cofounder and editor in chief of the revolutionary Bellevue Literary Review. More
Washington Post review of “Singular Intimacies”
Ofri discovered that she could draw a line between being a doctor and being a woman, that she could hate one patient and care deeply about another, that she could battle the medical establishment and even herself, and that despite modern medicine and her belief in the power of intellect, death conquers all. More
As I Live and Breathe: Notes of a Patient-Doctor
All medical students are required to write “history and physicals†(“H&Psâ€) about their patients. I ask my students to write one H&P in a narrative format — that is, to have the patient describe for the student what it is like to have a particular disease and what advice he or she might provide to a doctor in training. “As I Live and Breathe” is a lucidly woven answer to such questions. More
NY Times review of the Bellevue Literary Review
Bellevue may be the only municipal hospital in the country to have a literary review. It has attracted well-known writers despite not paying its contributors. The review has published poems by Philip Levine, David Lehman and Sharon Olds. There is also a poem by Julia Alvarez called “Bellevue,” which reads, “My mother used to say that she’d end up/ at Bellevue if we didn’t all behave.” More
Another Birth at Bellevue: A New Literary Magazine
For more than 200 years, as America’s oldest public hospital, Bellevue Hospital Center has seen the gamut of human experience and emotion. Birth and death, healing and sickness, bliss and agony are daily occurrences. More
Kirkus Reviews: “Singular Intimacies”
Heartwarming memoirs of a young woman’s years at a venerable New York City hospital, where she is transformed from bewildered medical student to assured physician…Let’s hope there’s a whole library of books to come from this talented physician/writer. More
Publishers Weekly review of “Singular Intimacies”
These essays…resonate with insight, intelligence, humor and an extraordinary sensitivity to both the patients she treated in this inner-city facility and the staff she worked with. More
Autopsy Room
Our first stop was the morgue. The cavernous walk-in refrigerator was icy and silent. Here were the unclaimed bodies, mostly elderly men from the streets. The ones that were never identified, never claimed, went to our anatomy lab. More
Alistair Cooke, Childhood Malapropism
(Just for fun, here’s my first ever ‘publication’ in the New York Times: a letter I wrote as a medical student, after the death of a PBS icon of my childhood.) More
