Treating Patients When Language Is Only One of the Barriers
“A defective heart, a child detained by border guards — Julia Barquero had already had her struggles. But now her physician at Bellevue Hospital Center, Dr. Danielle Ofri, was trying to explain to Ms. Barquero that she could not receive a heart transplant because she was an illegal immigrant. More
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
New York Times review of “Medicine in Translation”
by Sam Roberts New York Times “When my immigrant grandmother contracted a contagious disease on her voyage to America from Eastern Europe, she was deposited in a London hospital, alone and unable to speak a word of English. Her story has evoked terror every time I have heard it. Imagine being afraid of medical treatment, … More
Alistair Cooke; Childhood Malapropism
(Just for fun, here’s my first ever ‘publication’ in the New York Times: a letter I wrote while as a medical student, after the death of a PBS icon of my childhood.) More
New York Times review of “Incidental Findings”
Ofri’s thoughtful and honest second book…is equal parts “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “Kitchen Confidential.” The title is inspired by her realization, during her own amniocentesis, that conditions that seem minor to doctors are monumental when they happen to you. More
NY Times review of the Bellevue Literary Review
”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
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. And now some doctors and others at Bellevue want to mine those experiences in a new way, with The Bellevue Literary Review. More
