medical humanities
Why Medicine Needs Literary Magazines
As we face a clinical landscape ever more automated by algorithms and artificial intelligence, it is even more imperative that we in medicine train ourselves to understand the metaphors that patients harness as they attempt to convey their inner experience to us; otherwise we will fall short on the diagnosis. We need to hone our skills to capture the story that the patient is living; otherwise our treatments may never fully succeed. I can’t say that a literary magazine is the perfect prescription for every ailment, but it covers a lot of ground. And it almost never causes dry mouth or palpitations. Except, of course, when it’s a page-turner. More
Why AI Can’t Replace Your Doctor
As soon as I spotted my patient in the waiting room, I knew that I’d be admitting him to the hospital. Every doctor and nurse has had this experience — a glance at a patient and the instant recognition that something has run amok in his or her physiology. This is especially common in primary care medicine, where we know our patients for years, sometimes decades. We know their gait, their heart murmurs, their blood counts. And we know when something is amiss. More
PBS NewsHour features 25 Years of BLR
Bellevue Literary Review is featured on the esteemed PBS NewsHour. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown joined us to learn about BLR ‘s unlikely origin story and how it is still thriving after a quarter of century, expanding its programming, and creating of an unmatched community of readers, writers, patients, caregivers, and clinicians. More
Medscape profile of BLR and Doctor-Writers
Twenty-five years ago, Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, a primary care internist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and a few of her fellow doctors there decided to start a health-focused creative writing journal, Bellevue Literary Review (BLR). Back then, “there was lots of writing about health but not a lot about vulnerability, about when the body mutinies on you,” recalled Ofri… More
Mapping the Mind video
Watch the video of Danielle Ofri’s conversation with authors Susannah Cahalan, Sarah LaBrie, Damon Tweedy, focusing on memoirs of mental illness, neurologic disease, and psychological healing, and how writers give language to experiences that are often hidden, misunderstood, or stigmatized. More
Writing the Body video
Danielle Ofri moderates a fascinating conversation with best-selling authors Meghan O’Rourke, Rebekah Taussig, and Porochista Khakpour, exploring how they translate pain, diagnosis, treatment, and medical encounters into narrative. More
Crafting a Story of Illness
BLR Editor Danielle Ofri hosts Sandeep Jauhar, Rana Awdish and Theresa Brown for a fascinating conversation about getting illness onto the page. More
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
Unfinished Symphony
The baton came down and everyone was off. I tried to catch a few notes but was immediately flailing and thoroughly lost. It went downhill from there, for a solid hour, an experience that could comfortably be compared to extended root canal, although dentists generally provide anesthesia. More
Poetry & Parkinson’s
Hal Sirowitz is poet with Parkinson’s disease, He was one of the original performers at the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe and is BLR’s most published poet! Danielle Ofri hosts a film screening and conversation about poetry, Parkinson’s, and finding your voice. More
Covid Duets
Given the death and destruction all around us during the Covid pandemic, it felt unseemly to complain about coming home to a strange cello every night. But playing someone else’s cello is like sleeping on someone else’s mattress: everything feels wrong. More
Gaudeamus Igitur by John Stone
“Gaudeamus Igitur” is one of my favorite poems of all times. John Stone was a poet and cardiologist at Emory University, He wrote this poem (the title means “Therefore, Let us Rejoice” for a graduating class at Emory Medical School. More
Medical Humanities
When your body threatens mutiny and you are peering into the abyss, you want a doctor who has contemplated mortality in a deep way. Being sick is indeed hell and every patient deserves a Virgil. Infusing the medical training with a bit more Virgil just might be the key. More
Art & Anatomy
The “art of medicine†is a term that is used—sometimes disparagingly—to refer to the non-technical skills of medicine. Artistic rendering enables us to appreciate the emotional grappling one must do in the world of anatomy and in the larger world of medicine. More
In Search of a Beloved Teacher
“Written and Illustrated by.” These words were written on a blackboard in September, 1971, in crisp, authoritative chalk. This was practical magic, unfolding on our laminate pressboard desks every single day. Ms. Zive handed us power, and it was exhilarating. More
