Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Written by Atul Gawande
Narrated by Robert Petkoff
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
#1 New York Times Bestseller
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 shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life—all the way to the very end.
Atul Gawande
Atul Gawande is the author of several bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better; The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a MacArthur Fellowship, and two National Magazine Awards. In his work in public health, he is Founder and Chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He is also chair of Haven, where he was CEO from 2018-2020. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.
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Reviews for Being Mortal
1,702 ratings189 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be a powerful and thought-provoking book that addresses the important topic of aging and end-of-life care. The book provides real-life accounts and perspectives that allow readers to relate to the subject matter and understand the author's message. It encourages open and honest conversations about quality of life and the choices we make as we face our own mortality. The book is praised for its informative and empowering content, and many readers express gratitude for the valuable insights it provides. Overall, readers find this book to be an important and impactful read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Mortal is a thought-provoking book by a physician about health care professionals (primarily doctors) and the way they treat (or mistreat, depending on your point of view) humans at the end of their lives. Atul Gwande did a lot of research, interviewing patients and family members as well as health care professionals and reviewing alternatives to nursing home care. It's obvious that he doesn't have the answers but he gave voice to those who are (or have been) in the fight and are the experts in end of life care. As Dr. Gawande states, "It's not death the very old tell me they fear, It is what happens short of death".
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everyone should read this book.
It describes so much of what my mom went through the last three years of her life. Hospice palliative care was wonderful when we invited their care after seeing what hospitalizations did to my mom in her last few months. Caring for an aging parent is very challenging. Understanding what to think through is important and this book helps with that. The author uses stories very effectively so that the book is compelling and interesting. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Makes you think of aging in a way we don’t about this country
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don?t think the book is for the presently heavy-hearted. It may not even be for those facing imminent death of themselves or their loved ones. But it is for everyone. So, read it immediately before you find yourself in those phases ? head on, unconsidered, unprepared.Gawande begins with a welcoming and conversational explanation of how he is capable of and why he is eagerly writing about this subject. The reader learns along as the author tells his own story of learning and realization over years. Fortunately, Gawande provides this resource so we don?t have take years, ourselves, to learn the lesson: as mortals, if illness or accident don?t cut our lives short, we will face aging and decay of our minds and bodies ? something the medical industry is ill-equipped to support and guide us through.No doctor can ?fix? the problem of aging. At best, we can position ourselves with healthy bodies, active minds, and a plan for how we want to live out our late life should we live that long.A depressing chapter outlines the history and current state of late-life ?care?. Uninspired as current modes of tending the elderly are, they inspire us to think through what we would do differently or to which camp we will permit ouselves, our loved ones, to be subjected. In latter chapters, Gawande tells story after story of both failures and successes in end-of-life circumstances. They are relatable; so, the sources of data are provided in the endnotes for your further study. Additionally, Gawande provides some guidelines to shape the most difficult conversations we may ever have.Living out one?s life with a sense of purpose and self-selected priorities isn?t just for the young or middle aged it turns out. Having a sense of purpose is key when current culture thinks your fuel for contributing has run out. For many elderly, that purpose whittles down to taking care of a spouse experiencing more advanced symptoms of aging or simply trying to maintain the status quo of living in their own home without watchers meddling too much. Gawande questions how to preserve sense of purpose and set priorities when neither house nor spouse remain to tend.Read it. Learn. Consider and prepare. If not for yourself or a loved one, do it because there is a huge market lag and a tremendous opportunity to justly fill a gap for and compassionately support those who have reached the end of a natural life span. Gawande encourages us to have the courage to do this.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a beautiful meditation on--as the subtitle says--what matters. Looking at people's choices as they near the end of life, it becomes a brilliant reflection on life itself. Just one of the many eye-opening revelations: "the systems we've devised [to care for the elderly] were almost always designed to solve some other problem." That barely gives you a taste of the revelations throughout this book. Recommended for all mortals (and, yes, that means you!)
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is really important information that will help us to deal with death. I genuinely feel better about the whole topic, especially as it relates to my own finality and family members. The book isn't depressing or sad, it's inspiring.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sometimes difficult, fascinating, thoughtful discussion about facing our mortality and making each day of life its best (whatever that means). I think this is a must-read. Tom and I have been discussing it as I've read. We have lots to think about (individually and collectively).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Offers some difficult-to-face thoughts about aging and dying and provides suggestions for how out society could do better at helping people die more gracefully. Doesn't necessarily stand out from other books on the subject of death.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You have to read it
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bringing to life the fact that we will face death either by ourselves or from close relatives. A really compassionate approach.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I will be forever grateful to a friend who recommended Being Mortal. This book is informative beyond expectation, empowering the reader to be educated about the failings of our medical systems for the elderly and how families can communicate with providers, perhaps teaching them along the way.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an important book. We spend so much of our lives trying to avoid the inevitable: getting old and dying. This book opened my eyes to what it means to die with dignity and reminded me that getting old doesn't mean you're worthless.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Real life accounts allowed me to relate to the subject metter and understand the author's message. I feel I learned something. Also, the speaker helped me to follow the story. Often the voice is monotonous without inflection. This voice was professional.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thought provoking and powerful. I think everyone should listen to this book. Everyone.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For people who like to be as prepared as possible this is a profoundly important work. I will always be my roadmap. So thankful to Dr Gawande for sharing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brilliant. Absolutely a must-read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Intensely thought-provoking, well researched, and full of profound anecdotes, Gawande’s book is such a help to me as I deal with my octogenarian parents who are now struggling with various issues.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As important a book as I’ll ever read, for the people for whom I’m most responsible. Powerful and difficult messaging from a storyteller on the level of Lewis and Gladwell.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5thought provoking for subject most people are not comfortable discussing. His multipersective approach is refreshing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is really interesting and a valuable read?not only about end of life issues but about quality of life issues, and where the two overlap. Gawande lays out some powerful questions to ask yourself or your loved ones about what's important; I think it's also useful information for navigating conversations with doctors, which has a weird learning curve even under the best of circumstances. It's a practical book but also something of a parable or a koan for life in general, not just dying, and as such I strongly recommend it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent book to give you perspective into what matters most when we age and die
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Telling it like it is. At the end of the day, though we may have lived our lives for others, we want to retain the right to choose how we leave this world. At this time, we pray that other people will accept what matters to the one who is departing. Deep insightful factual storytelling on a sensitive often avoided topic. Thank You Atul Gawande! Namaste.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Many times, while reading Being Mortal, I recalled Dr. May Daly's book, Gyn Ecology, in which she details the dehumanization of medicine. Gawande's book focuses on the restoration of whole-person loving care that includes - and does not exclude - the unique individual in end-of-life choices and accommodation. This well-written book, filled with personal narrative, is about clinical medicine's restoration to fullness.
Eleanor Cowan, author of : A History of a Pedophile's Wife - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a book that's hard to read for the very reason that it's essential - it tackles a topic that our society really struggled to talk and think about in any depth. Which is because it's grim, scary and confronting obviously, but Gawande demonstrates that this failure to really think about how we age and, yes, die means that more and more people are having unnecessarily awful experiences at the end of their lives. The balance between medical treatment to extend life and that to improve quality of life is the key issue, and Gawande illustrates it clearly and movingly, using heart-breaking anecdotes and an array of research to make his points. You'll find yourself worrying about your own ability to deal with the difficulties that are ahead of us all, but that's the whole point - none of this gets easier if we just pretend it isn't going to happen.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gawande has lived, and served as a doctor, long enough to learn that quality of life is the conversation that matters most to folks when they are diagnosed with a terminal illness or face the end of their lives. Taking extraordinary medical measures is not always the better choice. If this book became required reading for high school seniors, American denial culture about dying might become more supportive and reality based over time.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The way spontaneous events and simply pulling away from the norm are remarkable to the old and wise. Great read!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There are likely to be other good books with insight comparable to Dr. Gawande's, but this happened to be my first explore into the issue of living with the knowledge that death is always guaranteed. The advice provided in this book is of great value. It may be that accepting the advice is difficult for some--like AA, first you must admit something. In this case it is: WE WILL DIE. Gawande gives helpful guidance for being prepared for death, whether that of a loved one, or our own. The benefit of his own experiences also gives us comfort when it is shown that even the most competent medical minds sometimes have difficulty coping with the end of life. Very good read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In a word....moving. Everybody should read this book , I strongly recommend it to anyone who’s faced with end of life decisions
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Such a good book talking about a topic we all face but sedomly talk about with anyone, couldn’t put the book down
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book! I’m a hospice nurse and it was memoir, medicine, history of care yet all related to the topic.