medicine

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

by Atul Gawande

Gawande argues that modern medicine, fixated on survival at all costs, systematically fails people at the end of life by mistaking the medical problem of preventing death for the human problem of preserving meaning and autonomy. He draws on hospice care, assisted-living research, and his own family's experience to argue that doctors must have hard conversations about priorities rather than defaulting to more treatment.