TY  - BOOK
AU  - Gawande,Atul
TI  - Being mortal: medicine and what matters in the end 
SN  - 9780805095159
AV  - R726.8 .G39 2014
U1  - ARCH YNDC 362.17 G284B  23
PY  - 2014///
CY  - New York
PB  - Henry Holt and Company, 
KW  - Terminal care
KW  - Critical care medicine
KW  - Aging
KW  - Physiological aspects
KW  - Quality of life
KW  - Hospice care
KW  - Prognosis
KW  - Death
KW  - Psychological aspects
KW  - Older people
KW  - Terminal Care
KW  - physiology
KW  - Activities of Daily Living
KW  - Quality of Life
KW  - Attitude to Death
KW  - Aged
KW  - Hospice Care
KW  - Critical Care
KW  - Aged, 80 and over
KW  - Book
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-277); Introduction -- The independent self -- Things fall apart -- Dependence -- Assistance -- A better life -- Letting go -- Hard conversations -- Courage -- Epilogue
N2  - 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
ER  -