01937cam a2200313 i 4500 884833663 TxAuBib 20230731120000.0 170828s2017||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u bl2017036071 9781250076229 PAP 17.99 1250076226 PAP 17.99 TxAuBib rda Gawande, Atul, author Being mortal. Being mortal [BOOK] : medicine and what matters in the end / Atul Gawande. First Metropolitan Paperback edition. New York : Picador, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Company, 2017. 287 pages ; 21 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes discussion questions. Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-277). 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. Here Atul Gawande examines its ultimate limitations and failures―in his own practices as well as others'―as life draws to a close. Provided by publisher. 20230731. Terminal care. Aging. Death.