Food, Songs, and Stories

I love food: how it looks and how it tastes, that when done well it relies on science and requires art, how it’s both essential to life and one of the life’s great pleasures, that it embodies cultures and family traditions, and how easily it communicates...

Every Fifteen Seconds

Two famous American women. Two missed opportunities for improved quality of care and patient safety in America. In December, it was Hillary Clinton  and in January, Barbara Walters.  Both women fell, hit their heads, and ended up in the hospital. In each case, the...

Telling Stories About Patients & Doctors

It’s now been 3 weeks, 3 days, and 33 hours since the launch of A History of the Present Illness and so far it seems that the book and its message are both resonating with patients and doctors, readers and writers, which is to say, it seems to be resonating with...

The Op-Ed

The Op-Ed is an interesting beast, not least because that shorthand is often thought to mean “opinion or editorial” when in fact it means “opposite the editorial page” (on that perhaps dying artifact known as a newspaper), and as it turns out...