Residency Regulators are Back!
Every patient wants a doctor who is well rested and alert, but limiting residents to 80 hours per week wasn’t as simple a panacea as it seemed. In fact, the 80-hour workweek did not decrease errors and did not increase sleep time for the doctors. More
The Pastor’s Son
There was a sharp rap at the apartment door. When Samuel Chuks Nwanko opened it, he saw a young man standing in the hallway wearing a stained denim jacket over a University of Nigeria T-shirt. The whites of his eyes were spidered with crimson streaks. He was probably a fellow university student, but not in the civil engineering department. Samuel didn’t recognize him. More
Why Patients Don’t Take Their Meds
For a substantial number of people, medicine from a prescription is automatically suspect. But if it comes from a health food store, there’s not a hint of concern. More
At Bellevue, a hospital reflects a changing world
Though city hospitals invoke images of charity patients and substandard, last-resort medical care, the reality is quite different. 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
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 Bellevue”—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
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
Writing “Medicine in Translation”
by Danielle Ofri Huffington Post The first book I wrote custom essays uk about medicine, “Singular Intimacies,” did not start out as a book. It started out as a breather–an exhalation, you might say–after a decade of medical training at Bellevue Hospital. After ten years of exams, hospitals, illness and death, I needed some air. … More
Writing About Patients: Is it Ethical?
There is a veritable epidemic of doctor-writers out there. What about confidentiality? Professionalism? HIPAA? More
Book Launch for “Medicine in Translation”
It was a frigid January night, but happily that didn’t stop booklovers from coming out to Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. Seventy fans and friends packed the seats to hear Danielle Ofri read from her new book, “Medicine in Translation.” She read aloud about her experience caring for a Tibetan hunger striker … More
People, Panic, and Pandemics
The fact that a half-a-million people die each year from filariasis, Guinea worm, and onchocerciasis elicits little more than a yawn. But diseases like Ebola and swine flu had us riveted: horrific pathogens from the primordial African or Asian muck could migrate to infect the innocent Western world. Sounds like a thriller movie. Which it was. Outbreak, in 1995, grossed more money than the budget for most health departments. More
