Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

· Kushiel's Legacy Book 36 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Robert Petkoff
4.7
32 reviews
Audiobook
9 hr 3 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Want a free 15 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

#1 New York Times Bestseller

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 shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life—all the way to the very end.

Ratings and reviews

4.7
32 reviews
Jackie Blais
January 30, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. So informative and definitely made me take a look at my life and how I handle those hard conversations that no one wants to have.
Did you find this helpful?
Keiton Johnson
February 9, 2018
An excellent book on finding what the patient truly wants. It's a book that covers the topic of terminal illness and death, but shines a light on how providers can help the terminally ill live the rest of their lives on the patient's own terms.
43 people found this review helpful
Did you find this helpful?
Pedro Serrano
April 15, 2018
Great book
23 people found this review helpful
Did you find this helpful?

About the author

Atul Gawande is the author of four bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better; The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal. 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 Founder and Chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He is also chair of Haven, where he was CEO from 2018–2020. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.

Robert Petkoff has won multiple AudioFile Earphones awards for his acclaimed narrations. He was named Best Voice of Fiction & Classics for his reading of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale. His other narration credits include Oath of Office by Michael Palmer, Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman, and books by David Foster Wallace.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

Continue the series

Listeners also liked

More by Atul Gawande