medical training
Danielle Ofri on NPR’s ‘The Takeaway’
Danielle Ofri is interviewed by NPR’s John Hockenberry on ‘The Takeaway’ about whether medical school makes students jaded and bitter. More
The Darkest Year of Medical School?
Next month, your future doctor will take the first steps into clinical medicine. I am not talking about the first day of internship (though that also happens on July 1), but the monumental transition that medical students make at the halfway point of medical school from the classroom years to the clinical years. More
Medical Errors and the Culture of Shame
It was probably our eighth or ninth admission that day, but my intern and I had given up counting. I was midway through my medical residency, already a master of efficiency. You had to be, or you’d never keep up. This one was a classic eye-roller: a nursing home patient with dementia, sent to the emergency room for an altered mental status. When you were juggling patients with acute heart failure and rampant infections, it was hard to get worked up over a demented nonagenarian who was looking a little more demented. More
Mensches with MDs
All religions have weighed in on the thorny ethical controversy of when life begins. In the Jewish faith, however, there is consensus: the embryo is only viable once it graduates medical school. More
NPR Interview–Why Would Anyone Become a Doctor?
Danielle Ofri speaks on Minnesota Public Radio about why would anyone choose to become a doctor. Hear the story now. More
Why Would Anyone Become a Doctor?
The awe of discovering the human body. The honor of being trusted to give advice. The gratitude for helping someone through a difficult illness. These things never grow old. More
Owning Up to Medical Error
Precisely two weeks after completing my medical internship,I proceeded to nearly kill a patient. July marked the startof my second year of residency at New York City’s BellevueHospital, and it was my first time being fully in charge of a patient. More
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
“July 1st” : Part Three
Watch the final installment of Danielle reading “July 1st,†the poignant and funny story about the first day of internship. One of the most popular requests of her readings. (From “Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue.†More
“July 1st” : Part Two
Watch Part Two of Danielle reading “July 1st,†the poignant and funny story about the first day of internship. One of the most popular requests of her readings. (From “Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue.†More
“July 1st”: Part One
Watch the video of Danielle reading “July 1st,†the poignant and funny story about the first day of internship. One of the most popular requests of her readings. (From “Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue.†More
Residency Regulations—Resisting Our Reflexes
Our instinctive resistance to change reflects not just nostalgia, but the fact that our years of medical training define us in an iconic fashion unique to this profession. Medical training sets social, clinical, and moral barometers by which decades of professional and personal life are gauged. These brief years imprint a personal definition in a manner not seen in other fields: one rarely hears MBAs clucking about crumbling standards and the days of the giants—most view the younger generation with unabashed envy. More
Autopsy Room
Our first stop was the morgue. The cavernous walk-in refrigerator was icy and silent. Here were the unclaimed bodies, mostly elderly men from the streets. The ones that were never identified, never claimed, went to our anatomy lab. More
