"Dr. Chan and Mrs. Geng (not their real names) eased out of their chairs in the waiting room using their matching wooden canes, the kind distributed by the hospital, free of charge. At 89, Dr. Chan was stooped and frail, his body paper-thin. He seemed as though he might topple… Read full post »

"What happens when the poet faces illness? How is the poetry affected by alterations of the body and mind?"

Read Danielle's new article in the Journal of Medical Humanities. 

Here's the beginning:
"When I think about the definition of poetry, I have an image of the vast chaotic world bei… Read full post »

Mammograms: One doctor, her patients, herself

Monday:  Our journal club at the hospital reviewed the recent Norwegian trial showing limited benefits of mammograms.

Tuesday: I had my appointment for my own mammogram.

Wednesday: Veneta Masson’… Read full post »

Quality Health Care? Ask Your Veterinarian

“…How is that the simplest routine medical matters have been made so complicated by our insurance companies? Why does every encounter req… Read full post »

by Danielle Ofri
CNN.com
Sept 16, 2010.

What exactly is the mission of a medical school? Is it to train the best and smartest doctors? Is to tend to our nation’s health? Is it to further medical knowledge?

Go to the website of just… Read full post »

Can Americans ever speak reasonably to each other about abortion? It seems impossible, given how polarized our country is. The emotions run far too deep on both sides. No one seems to be able to listen to anything anyone else says, even something reasonable. The assumption is that anyone on… Read full post »

Quality measures are all the rage now. Insurance companies and HMOs love them because they see them as ways to save money. Hospitals and medical organizations are flocking to them because they are an appealing way to measure and possibly improve medical care. The zeitgeist of “pay… Read full post »

"Precisely two weeks after completing my medical internship, I proceeded to nearly kill a patient...."--Danielle Ofri, MD

It's been more than a decade since the seminal report "To Err is Human" by the Institute of Medicine.  The report made waves when it estimated that 1.5 million people… Read full post »

Stereotypes are being chased away in medicine—at least on paper. It’s no longer permissible to discriminate against women (and since women are likely taking over medicine, that’s a good thing!) The topic of race is verboten, as is religion. Cultural competency is everywhere in medic… Read full post »

The issue of immigration is more polarizing than ever. When it comes to health care, the emotions flare even higher. I’ve written a lot about my immigrant patients and medical issues. Online comments to these articles have tended to be extremely vitriolic, especially when I’ve wri… Read full post »

How many hours can a doctor work?

The residency regulators are back. About ten years ago, the national organization that accredits residency programs (ACGME) set out its first guidelines about how many hours a doctor-in-training can work. Interns and residents finally achieved the vaunted 80-h… Read full post »

A good chunk of every medical visit is spent writing prescriptions. Before we had an electronic medical record, this was often an arduous task, leading to serious writer’s cramp. Now the computer makes it easier on the doctor, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect on the patient… Read full post »

The fine print of the 2010 Health Care Reform bill is still being analyzed. Shortcomings and limitations are being uncovered. But a new report from the Commonwealth Fund showed that there will be immense and immediate gains for young adults.

Most young adults “fall off” of t… Read full post »

We like to think of human beings as social animals, and by and large we are. Most of us exist in complex networks of siblings, parents, children, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances. And usually we take this for granted.

Every so often, in my work at the hospital, I… Read full post »

Good health is only affordable—for the majority of the population—if it is covered by insurance. An excellent case in point is the vaccine for shingles (herpes zoster).

Shingles is the revisiting of the chicken pox virus. The virus lives in the body since the first episode… Read full post »

What’s inside the sausage of hospital rankings?

Every year the U.S. New & World Report publishes its rankings of the nation’s top 50 hospitals. Hospital administrators await this top 50 report with a tension and fervor that rivals the NFL first-draft pick.

As soon… Read full post »

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 a… Read full post »

In a move that would fit right in with Stalinist governing style, Governor Jan Brewer signed bill SB-1070 into law, making it a state crime to walk the streets of Arizona without papers proving one’s immigration status.

A person could be detained by police and charged with a misdemeanor… Read full post »

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?”

But I wanted a… Read full post »

Counting calories as part of health care reform—who knew? But apparently it’s there on page 455 of the health-care reform act, according to Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition at NYU, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine. There will now be a national effort at… Read full post »

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… Read full post »

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… Read full post »

The mid-point of medical residency is probably the bleakest point in medical training. The daily grind of death and disease wears young doctors down, and the end of residency seems impossibly far off. In the second year of my residency at Bellevue Hospital, I began taking dance class a… Read full post »

Taking care of ill patients exerts an enormous physical and emotional toll. Caregivers of all types—doctors, nurses, therapists, family members—are susceptible to these strains. But reactions to these stresses are different. Some caregivers possess large emotional reserve an… Read full post »

When I make rounds with my students and interns, I always try to sneak in a poem at the end. I think poetry is important because it helps convey the parts of the medical experience that don’t make it into textbooks. It’s important because it teaches creative thinking—… Read full post »