In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending
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.
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.
Author -
Atul Gawande is the author of three bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better, selected by Amazon.com as one of the ten best books of 2007; and The Checklist Manifesto. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1998, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won two National Magazine Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and been named one of the world's hundred most influential thinkers by Foreign Policy and TIME. In his work as a public health researcher, he is Director of Ariadne Labs a joint center for health system innovation. And he is also co-founder and chairman of Lifebox, a global not-for-profit implementing systems and technologies to reduce surgical deaths globally. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.
You can find more at http://www.atulgawande.com.
SOME OF THE CUSTOMER REVIEWS ABOUT THIS BOOK [ SAMPLE ]
1) This book could be a game changer - 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.
In this new book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Gawande looks at the problems of the aging population and inevitability of death. He points out that you don't have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal conditions to see how common it is for modern medicine to fail the people it is supposed to be helping. In speaking of elder care he sadly points out that "Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm and suffering we inflict on people and has denied them the basic comforts they need most". Many physicians are so hell bent on preserving life that they cause horrible and unnecessary suffering.
Gawande points out that sometimes in striving to give a patient health and survival their well-being is neglected. He describes well-being as the reason one wishes to be alive. He looks at the "Dying Role" as the end approaches describing it as the patient's ability to "share memories, pass on wisdom and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish legacies and make peace with their God. They want to end their stories on their own terms." He feels that if people are denied their role, out of obtuseness and neglect, it is cause for everlasting shame.
Gawande shares his deep seated feelings in this book by revealing personal vignettes of how friends and family coped with these powerful and challenging issues. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds. He discloses how is mother-in-law Alice's life is changed by taking up residence in a senior facility as the only reasonable option. Senior facilities and nursing homes, even the best run, are often sterile institutions that can cause psychological anguish. He includes how he dealt with the final wishes of his father. It is a melancholy yet empowering picture of a man and physician honoring his father.
Atul Gawande provides the reader with an understanding that though end of life care is inevitable there are ways to humanize the process. The patients, their families, the medical professionals are coming to terms with how to better face the decision making processes that will be, in many cases, the last decision. The subject matter is complex and sensitive but the moral of the book is that "The End Matters".
Until you or a loved one are dealing with the healthcare/medical "system" these days, you can't imagine how much it can negatively affect your quality of life, no matter what your actual medical condition is or your life expectancy. We will all face aging, illness and death...sooner or later. But inevitably. We need more humanity and compassion from each and every person in the healthcare/medical system today. (If only they WOULD read this and get trained in how better to deliver the experience that patients---aka "customers" if you want to use the lingo of business, which healthcare has turned into.)
Getting the care you need, care that supports one's independence (as much as possible) and autonomy when health-challenged, as I've learned in my own life, is incredibly challenging, even if you have good health insurance and access to "good" doctors. So much of what is needed is obvious to those who are ill and aging--and to some (though certainly not all) of their families. But getting what you need? Difficult beyond belief.
It is encouraging to see someone of Gawande's success/influence taking on these issues. Real-life stories and experiences fill this book and they are important. You have to believe things can change for anything to actually begin to change. Just reading about the individuals striving to make life better for those in their care is encouraging. It's hard to be hopeful when one deals daily only with resistance to change and with people who don't seem to listen or hear (or maybe even care) what patients want and need. It takes courage for these folks to buck the system and to put their patients first.
As another reviewer noted, this could be a gamechanger. I hope so. We need change and we need to celebrate the people who are making a difference each day, whether in the hospital, doctor's office or nursing home. As a baby boomer, I know most of us will find real issues with how we are treated, and will be treated as we age and as our health fails.
In this new book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Gawande looks at the problems of the aging population and inevitability of death. He points out that you don't have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal conditions to see how common it is for modern medicine to fail the people it is supposed to be helping. In speaking of elder care he sadly points out that "Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm and suffering we inflict on people and has denied them the basic comforts they need most". Many physicians are so hell bent on preserving life that they cause horrible and unnecessary suffering.
Gawande points out that sometimes in striving to give a patient health and survival their well-being is neglected. He describes well-being as the reason one wishes to be alive. He looks at the "Dying Role" as the end approaches describing it as the patient's ability to "share memories, pass on wisdom and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish legacies and make peace with their God. They want to end their stories on their own terms." He feels that if people are denied their role, out of obtuseness and neglect, it is cause for everlasting shame.
Gawande shares his deep seated feelings in this book by revealing personal vignettes of how friends and family coped with these powerful and challenging issues. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds. He discloses how is mother-in-law Alice's life is changed by taking up residence in a senior facility as the only reasonable option. Senior facilities and nursing homes, even the best run, are often sterile institutions that can cause psychological anguish. He includes how he dealt with the final wishes of his father. It is a melancholy yet empowering picture of a man and physician honoring his father.
Atul Gawande provides the reader with an understanding that though end of life care is inevitable there are ways to humanize the process. The patients, their families, the medical professionals are coming to terms with how to better face the decision making processes that will be, in many cases, the last decision. The subject matter is complex and sensitive but the moral of the book is that "The End Matters".
By Miss Barbara VINE VOICE on September 26, 2014
3) An inspiring read that should be mandatory for anyone dealing with patients and families as they age and enter the end of life. - As a fan of Gawande's previous books and someone whose personal life is currently very much about the topics covered here, I found this a much-needed and absorbing read. Its honesty is sobering (and possibly shocking to those not intimately familiar with what passes for "healthcare" today in the United States).
Until you or a loved one are dealing with the healthcare/medical "system" these days, you can't imagine how much it can negatively affect your quality of life, no matter what your actual medical condition is or your life expectancy. We will all face aging, illness and death...sooner or later. But inevitably. We need more humanity and compassion from each and every person in the healthcare/medical system today. (If only they WOULD read this and get trained in how better to deliver the experience that patients---aka "customers" if you want to use the lingo of business, which healthcare has turned into.)
Getting the care you need, care that supports one's independence (as much as possible) and autonomy when health-challenged, as I've learned in my own life, is incredibly challenging, even if you have good health insurance and access to "good" doctors. So much of what is needed is obvious to those who are ill and aging--and to some (though certainly not all) of their families. But getting what you need? Difficult beyond belief.
It is encouraging to see someone of Gawande's success/influence taking on these issues. Real-life stories and experiences fill this book and they are important. You have to believe things can change for anything to actually begin to change. Just reading about the individuals striving to make life better for those in their care is encouraging. It's hard to be hopeful when one deals daily only with resistance to change and with people who don't seem to listen or hear (or maybe even care) what patients want and need. It takes courage for these folks to buck the system and to put their patients first.
As another reviewer noted, this could be a gamechanger. I hope so. We need change and we need to celebrate the people who are making a difference each day, whether in the hospital, doctor's office or nursing home. As a baby boomer, I know most of us will find real issues with how we are treated, and will be treated as we age and as our health fails.
