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Singular Intimacies

Singular Intimacies

List Price: $14.00
Your Price: $10.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Medical training and personal growth
Review: Danielle Ofri expressed clarity and beauty in her writing while conveying experiences from her clinical training. The book, Singular Intimacies, takes us into the emotional and intellectual training of a physician during her transition from medical student, to intern, to resident at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
Ofri describes some of the hard lessons she was faced with while transitioning one year to the next, including how to treat all her patients with compassion, even those who are difficult or are hard to get along with. I particularly enjoyed the sense of wonder she details while gaining clinical confidence and expertise.
Ofri portrays great insight into medical training which could be useful for those interested in entering a medical profession. Currently in medical school, I felt that this book would appeal to health care workers, students, physicians, and the general public.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: wonderfully written and compelling
Review: Danielle Ofri is a gifted writer who offers a rare look at the relationships between doctors and patients. This completely absorbing book could not fail to touth the humanity of everyone who reads it. It soars!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Danielle Ofri's work tours us through the Jekyll and Hyde world of modern medicine while wearing the author's heart very firmly on its sleeve. In Ofri's version of Bellevue Hospital, the goal is always noble: to treat and help every sick person, to the best of the staff's ability. The methods, however, are often Draconian, so if your goal in reading about medicine is to condemn the looming medical industry, you'll find plenty of tinder here. On the other hand, if what you're looking for is searing treatment of the case-by-case emotional trauma of administering medicine to the very sick, this is pitch-perfect. It's well written, certainly, and any individual essay can stand alone, but of greater merit is the aesthetic Ofri brings to her observations. She desperately wants to find the poetry lurking behind each "code," I.V. and intern. More often than not, she finds it. The chapter "Intensive Care" is especially effective, at once a stunning character study and an alarming look behind the veil of medical training. Put it this way: if Dr. Ofri lived anywhere near me, I'd want her to be my doctor.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Singular Work
Review: Danielle Ofri's work tours us through the Jekyll and Hyde world of modern medicine while wearing the author's heart very firmly on its sleeve. In Ofri's version of Bellevue Hospital, the goal is always noble: to treat and help every sick person, to the best of the staff's ability. The methods, however, are often Draconian, so if your goal in reading about medicine is to condemn the looming medical industry, you'll find plenty of tinder here. On the other hand, if what you're looking for is searing treatment of the case-by-case emotional trauma of administering medicine to the very sick, this is pitch-perfect. It's well written, certainly, and any individual essay can stand alone, but of greater merit is the aesthetic Ofri brings to her observations. She desperately wants to find the poetry lurking behind each "code," I.V. and intern. More often than not, she finds it. The chapter "Intensive Care" is especially effective, at once a stunning character study and an alarming look behind the veil of medical training. Put it this way: if Dr. Ofri lived anywhere near me, I'd want her to be my doctor.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Some unforgettable patients! And patience.
Review: I can't stop thinking about the patients that Danielle Ofri so exquisitely portrays in Singular Intimacies ... even the grumpy or chronically misbehaving ones! What that tells me is that these are portraits of people who were truly cared for by their doctor. How utterly refreshing to get this perspective, given the prevalence of cynicism about the quality of care and consideration provided by most doctors. As Dr. Ofri's patient, you're a person, not just a body filling a bed, or the name at the top of an order for medications or tests. I also gained respect for the mystery-solving aspect of diagnosing what ails the patient. If Dr. Ofri can't be my doctor, I would hope that my doctor would have read her book during their training!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I have read many "becoming a doctor" books and some are interesting but are written by people who have no business writing a book! This one was definitely an exception. The author was a wonderful writer and the book was delightful. A definite must-read!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Strong Writing and Great Stories
Review: Singular Intimacies

If you have ever wondered what medical training is like, if you have ever fantasized about becoming a doctor, or if you just love strong writing and great stories, this is a book for you.

Singular Intimacies takes us inside the emotional and intellectual heart of a doctor as she makes her journey from medical student to resident physician during her training at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. As a physician and poet who learned to practice medicine at similar inner-city hospitals, I can assure any reader that Dr. Ofri's descriptions of the clinical situations she encounters (including the array of patients, diagnostic dilemmas, clinical conversations, and moments of genuine love and exhilaration), all ring true for me: patients recover unexpectedly from what seem to be fatal illnesses; they die without warning and without having an accurate diagnosis; and they laugh, bleed, masturbate, cooperate, and act up in every imaginable (and unimaginable) way. Through all these experiences, Dr. Ofri shares her own personal responses which vary from her sense of pride when she begins to experience a sense of mastery, to moments of intense anxiety and despair. I found myself re-experiencing my own excitement, fear, and sleep-deprivation, only this time with a compassionate guide, one who is strong enough to let herself laugh at gallows humor, and also be vulnerable enough to cry in the arms of a priest as the patient's family watches. And I celebrated when Dr. Ofri finally finished her training , bruised and calloused, but with the compassionate heart and voice of a healer.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Singular view of the march through medical school and beyond
Review: This is an interesting book and it certainly held my attention. But it was not especially enjoyable to read; at the time it came into my hands, a friend who was seriously ill was being treated at a teaching hospital. Those who prefer not to know too much about the white coats and their training (which is certainly being conducted on patients at teaching hospitals) may want to avoid this book.

That said, some of the stories about patients are pretty eye opening, as well. The human personality is remarkably fixed; a dirty old man who has probably made women miserable all his life will persist, even at death's portal. Some of these stories demonstrate the sad human drama caused by bone-deep denial; others show the amazing aspect of the creative, healing interaction between patient and physician.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: From the heart and from the mind
Review: This is not a book to take lightly. This is a book about real people, with real problems. This is a book written by a doctor who takes nothing about what she does lightly.
Dr. Ofri takes the sacred--a person and his/her life--and offers us a glimpse into the patient's world and the doctor's world in a poetic, gorgeous book that offers us both rare insight about ourselves and insight about human beings in general.
Each essay describes a moment in time, a look at Dr. Ofri's residency at Bellevue Hospital, a glimpse of one or more of her patients, and a glance toward the human condition and how it can be both transformational and devasting.
Dr. Ofri takes the mundane--an alcoholic arriving in the ER from too much imbibing--and transforms the story into one that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
I am not a doctor, I am not a scientist. I am an ordinary person who will never again look ordinarily at any person whether I see them in a hospital bed or posted as a missing person on a flyer.
Perhaps what sets Dr. Ofri apart is that she is a doctor, a wife, a mother. But I hope not. I hope that every doctor could aspire to having access to both sides of his/her brain, to show emotion and to offer solace in a way that Dr. Ofri has.
This is a must read for anyone in the medical field and a must read for anyone who aspires to have a deeper connection in any relationship with any person.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: From the heart and from the mind
Review: This is not a book to take lightly. This is a book about real people, with real problems. This is a book written by a doctor who takes nothing about what she does lightly.
Dr. Ofri takes the sacred--a person and his/her life--and offers us a glimpse into the patient's world and the doctor's world in a poetic, gorgeous book that offers us both rare insight about ourselves and insight about human beings in general.
Each essay describes a moment in time, a look at Dr. Ofri's residency at Bellevue Hospital, a glimpse of one or more of her patients, and a glance toward the human condition and how it can be both transformational and devasting.
Dr. Ofri takes the mundane--an alcoholic arriving in the ER from too much imbibing--and transforms the story into one that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
I am not a doctor, I am not a scientist. I am an ordinary person who will never again look ordinarily at any person whether I see them in a hospital bed or posted as a missing person on a flyer.
Perhaps what sets Dr. Ofri apart is that she is a doctor, a wife, a mother. But I hope not. I hope that every doctor could aspire to having access to both sides of his/her brain, to show emotion and to offer solace in a way that Dr. Ofri has.
This is a must read for anyone in the medical field and a must read for anyone who aspires to have a deeper connection in any relationship with any person.


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