Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.. 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. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: How medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitati

This book could be a game changer N. B. Kennedy This book could be a game changer, if enough people read it and take it to heart. Atul Gawande addresses end-of-life care, and how we're getting it wrong, both within the medical establishment and in our families.Dr. Gawande's book focuses both on medical procedures and living conditions in later life. He addresses the reality that as people near the end of life, decisions about their living situation are primari. "The End Matters" Miss Barbara I became a fan of Atul Gawande upon reading his first book in 2002: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. In reading many of his previous books I found he always asked questions: Why do we do things; for what purpose; is this working to achieve the best results for the patient in his physical and cultural circumstance? Gawande tackles the dilemmas of medical ethics by approaching them with sag. "Somethings to Consider toward the End" according to Margaret N. Flannery. Book is mostly well written. It is about death and dying, so be prepared to read it when one is in a good frame of mind. It profiles patients who are terminal and how they and their families coped with the specter of death. Doctor Gawande relates the stories of courageous patients nearing the end of their lives. Bear in mind, they are upper middle class, obviously have means at their disposal and even though thei