CHECK OUT: Being Mortal

Dear Friends,

As part of our ongoing discussion and exploration of dying, death and end of life care I thought you might find the book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande a thought-provoking read. It was recommended to me by another friend, and reading it affirmed many of my thoughts on the modern healthcare system and how ill-equipped it is to deal with someone at the end of their life.

“In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die.”

A trained surgeon, public health leader, esteemed writer and medical professor, Dr. Gawande writes from a deeply personal as well as professional perspective of the gaps in medical education, practice and systems that result from our ingrained aversion to addressing dying and death as a part of a whole life cycle of care. He shares his own family’s story, dealing with the terminal illness of his father, alongside patient stories and research to illustrate not only the pitfalls but the alternatives to our current institutionalised approaches to end of life care.

In Being Mortal, he takes the reader along on a journey of discovery and exploration as he seeks to learn new, better ways to support people to live through to the end of life, on their own terms, in whatever way that manifests itself day to day, hour by hour, moment by moment.

“We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.”

With great insight and empathy he demonstrates that for medical practitioners willing to see each patient as a whole human being, to take the leap of understanding what truly matters to each of them, and most especially to lean into difficult conversations around dying and death, there is the possibility of offering something beyond just mere survival.  

“[W]hatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the larger aims of a person’s life.  When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric. When we remember it, the good we do can be breathtaking.”

This book should be compulsory reading for anyone practising or studying to practise medicine. For advocates and policy makers seeking healthcare reform it provides some valuable insights and knowledge. I hope you find it as enlightening as I did.

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Brenda Massey