Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande | Detailed Summary

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande | Detailed Summary

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.

Detailed Summary Features

This summary of the best-selling book quickly explains key concepts, reviews important examples, and empowers you with actionable insights to implement throughout your personal and professional life.

• Book & Chapter Overviews
• Chapter by Chapter Summaries & Key Takeaways
• Top 10 Overall Takeaways

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