These stories represent Amy Goodnough’s 2013 portfolio for The New York Times.
• “As Nurse Lay Dying, Offering Herself as Instruction in Caring”: Goodnough examined the case of Massachusetts nurse who, while dying of pancreatic cancer, allowed nursing students to observe her as a case study in hospice care. The article was path-breaking in describing the value for students to observe up close the pain, but also the dignity, of a dying patient.
• “For Victim of Ghastly Crime, a New Face, a New Beginning”: Goodnough wrote about a Vermont woman who had undergone one of the nation’s first full facial transplants after her estranged husband threw acid on her face. What might have been a clinical tale turned into an exploration of one woman’s psychological and emotional struggles to accept first losing her original face, and then accept the strange new one appended to her.
• In June, Goodnough began an ambitious project that will continue through 2014: the Remaking Medicine series, which is exploring how the Affordable Care Act affects health care for the people in one place, Louisville, Ky. In her first piece, “A Louisville Clinic Races to Adapt to the Health Care Overhaul” she studied how a clinic prepared for the overhaul. In the second, “For Uninsured, Clearing a Way to Enrollment,” she embedded with three health care “navigators” who help people enroll in the program. Through detail and vivid writing, the pieces rose above the narrow focus on partisan politics that has characterized much of the reporting on the Affordable Care Act.