Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2014304
US$26·00 ISBN-9780805095159
Ignoring W C Fields' famous advice never to work with children or animals, Dr Bill Thomas introduced both to the Chase Memorial Nursing Home in New York during the 1980s: two dogs, four cats, 100 parakeets, a colony of rabbits, a flock of chickens, and an on-site childcare facility for staff, to be precise. The initial effect was chaos (especially since the birds arrived uncaged), but over the next 2 years the number of prescriptions per resident dropped in half and even the mortality rate declined. In his new book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, surgeon and New Yorker staff writer Atul Gawande highlights this and other examples of the transformative power of thinking differently about medical care at the end of life.
In fact, if there is a recurring theme in Gawande's elegant and impactful writing it is his showcasing simple but effective ways of making people's lives—and their doctors' impact on them—better. (The title, in fact, of his second book.) In Being Mortal, he continues this tradition as he explores our society's medicalisation of the final chapter of our lives./.../
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