Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

　　重量級醫生作家葛文德於＜一位外科醫師的修煉＞、＜開刀房裡的沉思＞及＜檢查表＞後，重新探討醫療制度與人性尊嚴之間的醫藥的道德兩難

 

　　如何用藥物改善生活並維護人類生命尊嚴？

 

　　醫學與藥物在不斷發展下，各個環節已進入精準管理的階段，這種進步延續了人類生命的可能及長度。在衰老和死亡的不可避免的情况下，是否所有延續生存的＂機制＂皆能完整考量到人生而為人的生活尊嚴及生存價值？

 

　　可能是否定的。

 

　　葛文德身為醫生承認在致力延長壽命的過程中不斷進行的破壞性程序所造成的痛苦，其實無法全面提供病患及家屬所期望的生活質量。無論在老者照護或安寧病房，人 生最後一段路如何走得有品質及如病患期望，在我們討論社會醫療體系如何協助弱勢及老者時，應將其生而為人的尊嚴同時並重才是。（博客來編輯）

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.

Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.

作者簡介

　　Atul Gawande is author of three bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better, selected by Amazon as one of the ten best books of 2007; and The Checklist Manifesto. His latest book is Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a MacArthur Fellowship, and two National Magazine Awards. In his work in public health, he is Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.