Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

Being mortal : medicine and what matters in the end / Atul Gawande.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Farmington Hills, Mich : Large Print Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning, 2017Description: 443 pages (large print) ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781594139246
  • 1594139245
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
The independent self -- Things fall apart -- Dependence -- Assistance -- A better life -- Letting go -- Hard conversations -- Courage.
Summary: "From surgeon and bestselling author Atul Gawande, a book that has the potential to change medicine?and lives. 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 as others??as life draws to a close. And he discovers how we can do better. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds, a geriatrician in his clinic, and reformers turning nursing homes upside down. He finds people who show us how to have the hard conversations and how to ensure we never sacrifice what people really care about. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows that the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life?all the way to the very end"--Back cover.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Large Print Book Large Print Book Dr. James Carlson Library Large Print NonFiction 362.175 G284 Available 33111008883833
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

"Thorndike Press large print basic"

Originally published: New York : Henry Holtt & Company, 2014.

The independent self -- Things fall apart -- Dependence -- Assistance -- A better life -- Letting go -- Hard conversations -- Courage.

"From surgeon and bestselling author Atul Gawande, a book that has the potential to change medicine?and lives. 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 as others??as life draws to a close. And he discovers how we can do better. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds, a geriatrician in his clinic, and reformers turning nursing homes upside down. He finds people who show us how to have the hard conversations and how to ensure we never sacrifice what people really care about. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows that the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life?all the way to the very end"--Back cover.

Powered by Koha