22 Nov 2014

Atul Gawande: being mortal

From Saturday Morning, 9:05 am on 22 November 2014

Atul Gawande Credit Tim LlewellynSurgeon and writer Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a professor at Harvard Medical School, director of health system innovation centre Ariadne Labs, chairman of safe surgery non-profit Lifebox, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and author of three best-selling books.

His new book is Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End (Profile, ISBN: 978-1781253946) is about trying to support people to achieve their own priorities as the end of life approaches.

“The failure we have in medicine and in society is to recognise that people have priorities besides just living longer.”

"The core trouble that we face is not that we’re not having a good death, it’s that it's about having a great life until the very end."

Atul Gawande talks to Kim Hill.

Listen to Atul Gawande's 2012 interview with Kim Hill.

Photo by Tim Llewellan.

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