People want information and control, but they also want guidance. Shared decision making and the palliative power of hospice care were very beneficial to his father’s treatment. I like the idea that people have priorities beyond just living longer. It was a great example to read about how his father showed up to hear him deliver the graduation address at Ohio University, where he courageously and with great difficulty walked the length of the arena and then 20 steps up to sit in the stands. “I was almost overcome just witnessing it”, Dr. Gawande writes. “Here is what a different kind of care—a different kind of medicine—makes possible, I thought to myself.”
In the book’s final chapter, he recounts his father’s death and describes a scene from …show more content…
Gawande describes in his book, it doesn’t seem right to continue providing treatment after treatment, when reality may indicate that palliative approaches to care are more appropriate. Medicine has certainly succeeded in modern times, converting birth, injury, and infectious disease from traumatic to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death that goes along with human mortality, the goals of modern-day medicine seem to often run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, focused on safety, keep patients in railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of treatment have become doubtful. Doctors, committed to extending life for the family’s sake, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end only extends suffering. I think that people want their independence and autonomy with regard to decisions they need to make and if provided with the right information and suitable guidance from medical professionals, they can live out the remainder of their lives much happier. This book helped me consider my own mortality and what things I would do if faced with a serious illness or as I age, what my priorities are and the way I would want my life’s story to
In the book’s final chapter, he recounts his father’s death and describes a scene from …show more content…
Gawande describes in his book, it doesn’t seem right to continue providing treatment after treatment, when reality may indicate that palliative approaches to care are more appropriate. Medicine has certainly succeeded in modern times, converting birth, injury, and infectious disease from traumatic to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death that goes along with human mortality, the goals of modern-day medicine seem to often run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, focused on safety, keep patients in railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of treatment have become doubtful. Doctors, committed to extending life for the family’s sake, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end only extends suffering. I think that people want their independence and autonomy with regard to decisions they need to make and if provided with the right information and suitable guidance from medical professionals, they can live out the remainder of their lives much happier. This book helped me consider my own mortality and what things I would do if faced with a serious illness or as I age, what my priorities are and the way I would want my life’s story to