Being Mortal By Atul Gawande - 1329 Words

In Being Mortal, Atul Gawande painted a little depressing picture of the realities faced by the elderly in the US nowadays: declining health status, economic insecurity, and loss of independence. It seems once the older people move into nursing homes or assisted living facilities, they lose autonomy, dignity and privacy as the institutions are not able to fully individualize care. Even though the situation has been improving, it still shocks me to see how unhappy some of the elderly are in these circumstances. Realizing senior care facilities often fail to address all aspects of well-being, I would like to explore the issues of promoting both objective and subjective component in quality of care for the older people. This paper examines the quality of care received by the elderly with an emphasis on measurements for care, recommending additional tools to be adopted to measure the overall well-being for the elderly in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the quality of care for those living in senior care facilities. The fact that the American population is aging has raised concerns. In 2011, the number of adults over the age of 65 reached 41.4 million, which account for 13.3% of the population (A Profile of Older Americans: 2012, 2012). It is estimated that there will be about 71 million older adults by 2030 (Healthy Aging-Improving and Extending Quality of Life among Older Americans, 2009). Approximately 2.1 million elderly are currently living inShow MoreRelatedBeing Mortal By Atul Gawande1587 Words   |  7 Pages Part One: In the documentary Being Mortal by Atul Gawande talks about the death of patients and how it s a surprise to a large amount of the patients. He also explains the fear in the medical field, and as a doctor your suppose to help people and cure them, that you re supposed to give them a better shot and if it later doesn t go they way you expected,the doctors start to tell themselves what went wrong or what happen everything was going so well. Gawande talks about how he wants to learnRead MoreAnalysis Of Atul Gawande s Being Mortal1211 Words   |  5 Pagesthe prospect of death with patients. In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Gawande delves into what really matters as life comes to an end, new ways of helping the elderly enjoy their waning days, and the role of doctors and medicine in curing diseases and dealing with patients. Sheri Fink, a reporter for the New York Times, reviewed this book on November 6, 2014 for The New York Times Sunday Book Review in â€Å"Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’†. She thinks Being Mortal is a â€Å"valuable contribution to the growingRead MoreAnalysis Of Atul Gawande s Being Mortal854 Words   |  4 Pagesthe relationships we form with our family are unparalleled to that of any other. Family members are the people we count on in times of need and help make decisions that are in our best interest. Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal focuses on patients and their end of life care. On a visit to Lou Sanders, Gawande asked, â€Å"What makes life worth living to you?† and Lou hesitated before answering, â€Å"I have moments when I would say I think it’s time, maybe one of the days when I was at a low point†¦Ã¢â‚¬  As people nearRead MoreReview Of Atul Gawande s The New York Times Bestseller Being Mortal2112 Words   |  9 PagesIn the New York Times bestseller Being Mortal, surgeon and author Atul Gawande tackles just what may be the most difficult challenge of his profession, learning how to handle the ‘end-of-life process.’ Throughout his book, he recites the stories of several individuals, in which the trajectory from a state of independence to one of death can easily be traced in each. Although Gawande does acknowledge that death is inevitable, he emphasizes that individuals of society, especially those that work inRead MoreDeath : How The P erspective Of People Changes When They Are On The Edge Of Life1173 Words   |  5 Pageshuman’s life. When confronting the death, passively or actively, people usually have a different viewpoint from before and that assertion is proved in Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, Wit by Margaret Edson and the last pages of The Stitches by David Small. On Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, the author tells a story of Jewel Douglass, who gets a metastatic ovarian cancer. The doctors mention a lot of methods to cure her disease; howeverRead MoreBeing A Practicing Surgeon, Atul Gawande Essay1699 Words   |  7 PagesBeing a practicing surgeon, Atul Gawande approaches the dilemma of aging from a unique perspective. The study and implementation of traditional medical practices, he suggests, contributes to a problem solving, solution-based approached to over coming the hurdles of old age. The medical field, he says, puts the entirety of its focus on fixing the concrete problems that patients come into the emergency room with, instead of focusing on the best overall solution to satisfy the patients primary desiresRead MoreBeing Mortal : Medicine And What Matters753 Words   |  4 PagesAtul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End presses on an extremely difficult subject: death. Gawande talks about the need to confront death and not ignore it by taking steps in having a meaningful and satisfying end. Readers say that Gawande does demand a lot from people and the book is eye opening but it does not have a guide to having a better end in life. I agree that Gawande is demanding a lot but people still to listen to him but I think Gawande does give a guideRead MoreThe Hippocratic Oath, By Atul Gawande1344 Words   |  6 Pagespatient’s stories. Rita Charon in her article â€Å"What to do with Stories? The sciences of Narrative Medicine,† explores narrative writing and how to use it as a tool in healing patients. While Charon focuses on the writing of these stories, Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal reflects on how to make more meaningful endings out of the stories of patients who are on the brink of death. Medicine is for the health of thriving communities achieved through doctors’ success in devotion, close understanding, and treatingRead MoreThe Death Of Death1218 Words   |  5 Pagescomfortable conversation to have with others but death is common especially among the elderly population. Atul Gawande in Being Mortal talks about how death takes many people by surprise and the descriptions of aging and dying. All the while living better through the understanding of death. The author is trying to express that even those in the medical field struggle with death and not ensuring the well-being of the patients that are coming in. He emphasis the idea of the elderly feeling â€Å"comfortable† inRead MoreBeing Mortal By Sheri Fink1211 Words   |  5 PagesIn Being Mortal, Atul Gawande brings to revelation something we as humans know that will happen but in reality never really want to face: we are mortal and death will not escape us. Throughout the book, Gawande navigates the reader through a series of obstacles and choices faced to make when the ill and old have hit the stage of life when death is near. The New York Times reviewer Sheri Fink writes, â€Å"Being Mortal is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on aging, death and dying.† This