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You're listening to The Nocturnous Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman.

Today's guest needs very little introduction. Her name is Danielle Ophrey. She has an MD, a PhD, and is one of the foremost voices in the medical world today.

She's a primary care internist at Bellevue Hospital, clinical professor of medicine at NYU,

and founder and editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review.

Her writing appears in The New Yorker, New York Times, The Lancet, the New England Journal

of Medicine.

She's given several TED Talks. She's performed at the Moth, and she's the author of six

books, the latest of which is called When We Do Harm, a Doctor confronts medical error.

In today's conversation, Danielle and I rewind the clock a bit.

She tells us about her humble beginnings as a locum's tenants doctor roving around the Central U.S. and Central America.

She walks us through her journey, which took her very much off the beaten trail, which is admirable,

in my opinion.

And as you can tell from her bio, led to an incredibly rich writing life.

I was especially excited to hear Danielle talk about BLR, the Bellevue Literary Review,

where anybody can submit their writing. We talked about what she's looking for in writing these

days, how she mentors writers, and what she thinks about the future of physician storytelling.

Before we chatted, I asked Danielle to read an excerpt from an essay she published in the journal

Academic Medicine back in 2015. It's called Storytelling in Medicine, The Passion and the Parole.

...