The first patient I ever wrote about wasn’t actually my patient; as a first-year medical student, that possessive grammatical construct—“my patient”—hadn’t yet entered my consciousness, much less my lexicon. In any case, by the time I met him, he was already dead. More
We demand transparency in government, charitable institutions, nutrition labels, and middle-school grading rubrics. The medical record should be no different. And yet, in writing medical notes in this new age of full medical transparency, I can feel an awkwardness creeping in. There is something disquieting about knowing that my every word might be scrutinized. More
The world’s richest countries are now its most vaccine-hesitant. Can we learn to trust our shots before the next pandemic? Danielle Ofri profiles Heidi Larson, a “vaccine anthropologist,” for The New Yorker. More
During March and April of 2020, New York City experienced the Covid surge that many other localities faced later. I kept a journal during these frightening weeks, talking with my colleagues and patients at Bellevue, as we grappled with how we could manage primary-care medicine during a pandemic. More