Being Mortal

Medicine and What Matters in the End

Hardcover, 283 pages

English language

Published Dec. 22, 2014 by Metropolitan Books.

ISBN:
978-0-8050-9515-9
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OCLC Number:
1001484641

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4 stars (3 reviews)

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.

Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along with all of it.

In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures – in his own practices as well …

24 editions

Reading this will enable us all to make better decisions around the one aspect of life that is guaranteed for everyone: Death.

4 stars

Being Mortal Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

I think everyone should read this book. Everyone who might be mortal, everyone who may become old and frail. Everyone. I had been thinking that people in the medical profession should read this, especially those with responsibility for the care of the elderly. I still include them, of course, but this book is important to everyone.

“We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way.” ― Atul Gawande, (p259, 'Epilogue' , 'Being Mortal', Profile Books, ISBN 978-1846685)

In this book, Gawande explores how we …

Important and fruitful read

3 stars

This book encourages some crucial conversations and has greatly expanded my view of what it means to pursue health at the last stages of life. Most importantly, even though I'm surely still ill equipped emotionally, I've learned through account of other people's experiences what kinds of questions to ask.

The high relevancy and impact of this read make it worthwhile, but the book suffers from the non-fiction disease of the century: unnecessary long, repetitive, anecdotal and light on inputs from researchers in relevant fields. It might win over the most stubborn reader, but I had to speed through the middle sections of most chapters to ensure I'd have patience for the whole book.