Upcoming Books:
|
is reading "Being Mortal" written by Atul Gawande for May 21.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, a surgeon who writes about what happens to the human body as we grow older and die. He recognized during his medical training how little attention was devoted to the subject of death and the end of life. Medical training is about life and health, and how to preserve it. He felt he was unprepared to deal with mortality and to discuss death and dying with his patients and their families. As physicians, we were not good at handling patients during the last phases of their life. When his father was diagnosed with cancer, he decided to not take any therapy. As he pressed his father to reconsider his decision, Gawande had a revelation that hope was not a plan. His father's illness was going to progress. He was going to die. It caused him to think that doctors have been inflicting therapies on patients that shorten their lives and increase their suffering. This idea drove him to write this book and to consider how we can change the way we think about being mortal. University of Chicago, Department of Pediatrics Grand Rounds lecture series on October 27, 2014 |