Atul Gawande Being Mortal Summary

"PB 's dying," my husband mumbled as he hung up the phone. "They 're taking him off life support and moving him to Hospice care, but they don 't expect him to last long." I gave my husband a pep talk, reminding him that his younger brother had escaped death 's grip, many times before, even though the doctors had predicted otherwise. In fact, PB had miraculously eluded death so often that we had compared him to a cat with nine lives. He 'd recovered from life threatening illnesses, deadly accidents, even terminal cancer, so now all we could do is hope and pray he had one of those lives left and that he 'd triumph over the deadly sepsis that ravaged his body.

It brought to my awareness both the limitation and the capacity of medicine. Although there was no medical intervention that could cure the diseases of those terminal patients, their quality of life was improved  by an outstanding team of doctors, nurses and volunteers. This awareness helped reconcile myself to the fact that certain things, such as death and terminal illness, can not be avoided or changed. By viewing death as a natural part of life, I will be able to offer my dying patients the best care possible while also understanding my limitation as a physician and a human being.

End of Life care This important documentary does not come close to doing justice to Gawande 's video: Being Mortal. The book is rich with excellent examples of doctors, nurses and family members doing their level best assisting others to live the fullest and richest lives possible right up until and including the very end of their lives. As Dr. Atul Gawande would say, the point isn 't to strive for a good death but rather to have the best possible life that is congruent with one 's own values; and to make medical decisions and choices accordingly. By living each day in harmony with one 's goals and values, one is likely to have a good death.

In “ How Doctor Die”, an article written by Ken Murray, is about the way to prolong the life of doctors and patients when they have terminal illness. In most cases, a doctor home went, closed their practice and never set foot in a hospital again. They want to have more time with family. Doctor is a person treat the desease and save the patients; however, when they have illness, they are also like other patients. They can meet a difficulty with their patients in treament,but they feel easy when they are a patient.

Death is a natural process that will be experienced by everyone at some point, desirably at the end of a long, well lived life. The reality is that no one knows when that time will come or how it will happen. Unfortunately, for the terminally ill, death is in the near future and it is a sobering reality. Therefore, when that time comes, people need to know that they will have options, and the assurance that death does not have to be an agonizing end. They can choose to endure the annihilating pain that comes with the disease and allow it to take its natural course or choose to put an end to it, surrounded by those who love them.

When a patient is told they have a disease, they are shocked. Some patients worry that they may die, and others feel numb or confused about it. They may have a hard time realizing that their disease could be fatal. “When he asked if she was okay, her eyes welled with tears and she said, “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different” (Skloot 276).

People tend to go about their lives differently when they are faced with a road block along the way. Terminal illnesses are a great example of a road block that many people, unfortunately, encounter throughout their lives. Morrie Schwartz is met with ALS while Brittany Maynard is met with brain cancer during their lives. While Brittany Maynard and Morrie Schwartz were diagnosed with fatal illnesses, they prefer to approach their death in different ways. Ultimately, Morrie’s lessons in living with reach more people than Brittany’s advocacy for the right-to-die laws.

Atul Gawande’s book, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,” explores different themes such as, aging, death, and the mishandling of both aging and death by the medical profession’s. This book also addresses what it means to live well near the end of life. It is not just to survive, not just to be safe, not just to stay alive as long as the medical technology allows, but, according to the author it is about what living truly means to an individual. The author describes that the idea of “Being Mortal” developed as he watched his elderly father go through a steep decline in his health and the eventual death. He soon realized that during his medical education and training he was never taught how to help his patients with managing

Better (2007), by Atul Gawande begins with the story of Dr.Gawande as a surgeon in his final year in medical school. The first struck me because of the patient’s story. It was an elderly patient who nearly died from septic shock had it not been for a senior resident who checked on the patient twice each time making a life altering intervention to prevent the patient with pneumonia from going septic shock from resistant, fulminant pneumonia.

Kindness and thankfulness are appreciated, but you have to be careful with eye contact and touching of the patient. With male patients touching with a handshake is important, but with women you should wait for them to extend their hand first. Eye contact varies with the patient. Some see prolonged eye contact as a sign of being impolite. Most importantly lengthy indirect discussion of a condition is not preferred, but the method of direct action oriented approach is

It was not intended to make readers sad or necessarily agree with his decision, however, to examine their own life and situation and to contemplate death, as it is inevitable for everyone. Most people are bound to have to face a similar choice as Clendinen. Maybe not in the same extreme measure, but most people will have to make a decision for a family member who is no longer capable of making medical decisions for themselves. Clendinen achieved his purpose and readers should walk away from this article recognizing exactly what Clendinen’s beliefs are on death, and it ought to make them curious about their own thoughts and beliefs. At the very least, talk with their loved one’s before they ever become ill and find out their loved one’s wishes.

“Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande is a book that anyone with parents or grandparents in the elderly stages of life can relate too. Many of the stories are relatable and during my time of reading the book I would take specific stories he tells and show them to my mom and ask her who in our family does this sound like and does this not sound like what we are going through with grandma. She immediately agreed and wanted to read on for the smallest idea to help or solution that could solve the problems and issues we are facing. Dr. Gawande is accounting the care and treatment of the elderly and the dying and how it has evolved and progressed over the last century to what it is today and could become within the future. Dr. Gawande was a general surgeon who took interest in the care and treatment of the elderly. Within the book he relates his own experiences with his elderly patients and their

Atul Gawande in his article “Whose body is it, anyway?” introduced couple of cases, which discussed a controversial topic, doctors dealing with patients and making important medical decisions. These are difficult decisions in which people might have life or death choices. Who should make the important decisions, patients or doctors? Patients don’t usually know what is better for their health and while making their decisions, they might ignore or don’t know the possible side effects and consequences of these decisions. Doctors and physicians have more and better knowledge than normal people about human body and they are able to assist their patients while making tough decisions. However, they can not always make the right decision. Doctors can not predict the result of a surgery or a treatment and they do not have enough confidence of the result because sometimes the surgery could go in a way they didn’t expect. Although patients have the right to decide their treatments, doctors and patients should share

Death is something that will eventually happen to everyone, but there are so many different ways of people that deal with death around them. There are some people who don’t deal with death well, so they become mentally and emotionally unstable for their entire life. On the other hand, there are people who accept death for what it is and take the necessary steps to become more tolerant to it. In Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, he speaks about the various aspects (such as the cost of taking care of elderly people) that surround death that people often neglect. Death can be a very taxing area of discussion, but once people accept its cruel nature they can overcome the burden it brings.

Can you imagine going through long battle with a disease only to be told that you have only 6 more months to live. All of these thoughts and questions start running through your head and you feel like you’re dreaming or having some sort of out of body experience. Being diagnosed with a terminal illness is unimaginable, emotional and physically trying. Cancer is the number one leading cause of terminal death in the United States, to put that into a better perspective one out of every four deaths is cancer related. That’s about 564,000 deaths annually and 1,500 deaths per day.