Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Name: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Rating: 4.506696428571429 (224 reviews)
Author: Atul Gawande
ISBN: 9781781253946

by Atul Gawande

4.5

(224 ratings)

300 pages19 editions2014MacmillanISBN 9781781253946

nonfiction

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About this book

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.

Publication Details

Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2014
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9781781253946
Language: en
Editions: 19

About Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. For more than 20 years, he has practiced general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is also Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. ([source][1]) Photo Credit: By <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Amar_Karodkar&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="User:Amar Karodkar (page does not exist)">Amar Karodkar</a> - <span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64884113">Link</a> [1]: http://atulgawande.com/about/