doctors
Why Do Doctors Write?
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
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
Danielle Ofri hosts a conversation with editor Kate Edgar and writer Bill Hayes about the documentary of Oliver Sacks’s remarkable life More
The Book Doctors Are In!
Danielle Ofri hosts fellow medical writers Perri Klass, Esther Choo, and Damon Tweedy to talk publishing advice, creative writing, patient consent, the medical/writing life, and how to wrestle ethical dilemmas onto the page. More
Protecting Immigrant Patients
It was hardly two weeks after the election when a doctor in our clinic received a letter from one of her patients, an undocumented immigrant. The patient had diabetes and suffered from rotator cuff tendinitis, which makes reaching backward quite painful. “Is there any possibility you can write a letter,” she asked, “stating that if they handcuff me, can they please handcuff me with my hands in front of me?” As a physician, it was hard to read this without feeling sickened…. More
Twice as Hard
Danielle Ofri is joined by BLR Board Member Ashley McMullen to welcome Jasmine Brown for a timely conversation about the interplay of racism and sexism within medicine, shedding light on a powerful history of Black women physicians that has long been invisible. Jasmine Brown is the author of “Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century.” More
Women in Medicine Transforming Healthcare
Danielle Ofri and Lucy Lester discuss the history and the current status of women in medicine, and how women have transformed healthcare.
Co-sponsored by AMWA (American Women’s Medical Association) & WIMLF (Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation). More
NPR’s Morning Edition
NPR’s Neda Ulaby interviews Danielle Ofri and Celeste Ng on “Morning Edition” about BLR’s 20th Anniversary (and how a literary journal came to be founded in a storied public hospital). More
How to Improve the Doctor-Patient Relationship
Danielle Ofri talks with Elena Sung from the “Power of the Patient Project” about how to improve the doctor-patient relationshipe. More
The Doctors Blackwell
Few people today know much about what Elizabeth Blackwell actually did, and fewer are even aware of her younger sister Emily, by far the more accomplished clinician. More
Coronavirus: Why Doctors and Nurses Are Anxious and Angry
The story of the coronavirus is still being written. The stories of polio, Ebola, H.I.V. and measles—all, alas, still in progress— remind us that public health is an ongoing, never-let-’em-up-from-the-mat effort. Narrow vision, data ignorance, image-conscious decision-making and truncated memory are the very elements of contagion. No amount of Purell can sanitize that. More
Flying Solo
What happens when you are the only doctor in the auditorium? Or the only doctor on the plane? What do you do when the only stethoscope available rivals the toy one made by Fisher-Price for kids? More
The Covenant
Burnout among doctors appears to be at epidemic proportions these days, with concomitant gushing prescriptions for wellness and resilience. But in reality, most doctors are not burned out: most love taking care of patients and want nothing more than to be able to do just that. The source of the agony is the profession—or rather the corporatization of the profession… More
EMR Ménage à Trois
EMRs have both breathtaking assets and snarling annoyances. But what started out as a tool—a database to store information more efficiently than the paper chart—has inserted itself as a member of the medical team. What used to be a tango between the doctor and patient is now a troika. More
Empathy in the Age of the EMR
We doctors have been reduced to tools of mere data entry. A higher being might peek into our exam room and be unable to distinguish the doctor from the sphygmomanometer. There is at least one upside to this mess, however. The aggressiveness of the EMR’s incursion into the doctor-patient relationship has forced us to declare our loyalties: are we taking care of patients or are we taking care of the EMR? More
The Daily Exploitation of Medical Staff
Corporate medicine has milked just about all the “efficiency” it can out of the system. With mergers and streamlining, it has pushed the productivity numbers about as far as they can go. But one resource that seems endless—and free—is the professional ethic of medical staff members. More
