Family Matters In Atul Gawande's Being Mortal '

Family is supposed to listen to you when you're in need. Family is supposed to have your back. Family is supposed to be loyal. Family is supposed to be dependable. Family is supposed to accept you at your worst and best moments. Family is supposed to make you laugh and smile. Family is the number one unconditional love that everyone has. Whether it be the unconditional love from immediate family members or close friends, everyone has that one person they go to in times of need. It’s funny how those closest to you can hurt you the most.

Family plays a crucial role in an individual's life. They affect your decisions and the way you live. Your family can either bring you down or lift you up and push you to do your hardest.

.“As medical technology continues to advance and health care choices become more complicated, the preservation of end-of-life autonomy is an increasingly important issue faced by various client populations.” (Galambos, 1998).

Being Mortal is a captivating book that I was thrilled to have read for nursing school. Atul Gawande takes you on his journey about what an older adult truly wants and feels when making the transition into old age. He truly takes the time to show you different examples and circumstances in which an older adult must give up something they love in order to mold into what society has made available for older adults. According to the CDC, “In 2014 there were an estimated… 1,369,700 current residents in nursing homes…” (Harris-Kojetin, Sengupta & Park-Lee, 2016, p. xi). This is an astounding number of older adults that are being cared for by others, and that number is only going to continue growing. Throughout Being Mortal, you are taken on a trip

By using this article, it will provide reasons why a patient seeks assisted suicide when facing a terminal diagnosis, with 6 months or less to live. It offers the physician perspective on assisting terminal patients at the end of their life span. An explanation of the Death with Dignity Act provides an example of legislature in the United States addressing this controversial subject.

Death is a difficult topic for most people to discuss. Even those in the medical profession, such as doctors and surgeons, have a tough time discussing the 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 “Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’”. She thinks Being Mortal is a “valuable contribution to the growing literature on aging, death, and dying”, and does a good job of introducing the topic of

According to data from Washington and Oregon in 2012, there were 160 physician-assisted suicides and 90 percent of these deaths were of patients in hospices care. This poses a unique issue for hospice caregivers because on one hand they are not looking to prolong life, but on the other hand they are also not looking to hasten the process. There will always be a debate in hospices on whether or not physicians should assist in suicide of patients (Campbell & Cox, 26). Because a vast majority of the patients who opt for physician-assisted suicide are in hospice care, Hospice physicians are often referred to when a patient is considering physician assisted suicide. Even with the laws in Oregon allowing physician assisted suicide, many hospices refuse to condone it and many hospices will not perform physician assisted suicide. They refuse to perform assisted death because they seek to remain faithful to the historically formative values of hospice care. These include the philosophy that “death is a natural continuation of the human lifespan, that the dignity of each dying patient should be affirmed, that the quality of a patients remaining life should be promoted through the highest level of caring commitment, and that hospices should evince a distinctive devotion to symptom and pain management.” (Campbell and cox 27). Another reason certain hospices do not allow physician assisted suicide is because they are religiously affiliated. They are restricted from administering physician-assisted suicide because it is against their religion to do

A person who is dying of a terminal illness is faced with only one certainty; they will die from this disease. A doctor can say roughly the amount of time that a patient has, but they exact date and level of pain is hard to determine. Many may look to a physician for the answer on if they should/shouldn’t choose PAS, however, the only role a physician plays is giving the medical diagnosis and working with the patient to get what the patient feels is the best option. Therefore, the decision the patient makes doesn’t make the physician a moral guide, but rather a person doing their job. The last big decision people who are terminally ill have is when/how to die and it has to be their own and it has to be respected.

Dr. Ira Byock’s latest book, The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to transform Care Through the End of Life, is a remarkable book written from a personal perspective as one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country. Dr. Byock shares stories of his experience with patients in his clinical experience to illustrate how end-of-life care affects each person. He explains what palliative care really is and how to make humane choices in a world obsessed with conquering death. Byock presents an agenda for end-of-life care that stresses compassion, dignity, and each patient being viewed as a unique case with the opportunity to partake in shared decisions amongst a team of professionals and family members. Dr. Byock is an advocate of dying well in a society marked by a fear of death; his highly personal account provides thought-provoking vignettes of how people struggle to make the right decisions in the winter of their lives. Byock urges society to embrace the reality of death and transform the medical community into an environment that will allow patients to live the last of their days in comfort with dignity and peace. This book is a vitally important piece of literature for everyone to devour with fervor. Everyone needs to understand the inevitability of death and the environment end-of-life care can present in what will be the final moments of life.

There are occasions when medicine is not your friend and the effects of the treatment will only prolong the suffering of the patient. Healthcare professionals must be objective and ask will the end result be changed. We must know when it is appropriate to discuss end of life options and when it is not. According to Adams (2015), most desire to die at home, but less than half are allowed to do so (p. 13). Our responsibility is to allow the client to make an educated decision about all the available service and treatments.

A Death of One’s Own sheds light onto the controversial issue regarding end of life decisions, providing a few examples of people struggling with these choices. The film tells the stories of three particular individuals, Jim, Kitty, and Ricky, each with a unique end of life situation. Jim suffers from ALS and has specific care requests, 56-year-old Kitty struggles with her uterine cancer and constant pain, and Ricky is a patient dying from severe liver failure who can no longer speak and make decisions on his own. All of these individuals present different, yet similar issues regarding end of their life care. This film describes the importance of advance directives, the arguments surrounding physician assisted suicide, and this prompted me to form my own opinion on preparing my own directives and thoughts on these tough decisions.

Atul Gawande in his book Being Mortal said “We are all aging from the day we are born” and aging brings death. But due to improvement in science and technology, the life expectancy has increased over the years and lots of diseases have been eradicated and symptoms controlled to prolong life. Despite these advancements, we can delay the death but cannot stop the damage. As these damages accumulate, there comes a time when one more damage shuts down the whole system bringing death to the whole organism. Gawande talks about diseases that affect the elderly and mentions that there is a shortage of geriatricians in united states which is affecting the access to care. He also mentions that it's not just worn and tear that causes aging or the genetically

End-of-life care encompasses the aspects of helping patients and their families through the demise process, pain management, culturally sensitive practices and during ethical decision-making process (Hebert, Moore & Rooney, 2011). However that was not the case in the story of the 20-year-old Hailu, a college a freshman from the University of Nevada who was at the center of end of life controversial with St Mary’s hospital Nevada who in April 2015 was placed on life support following complications (decreased blood volume and lack of oxygen to the brain) from anesthesia after surgical procedure to remove her appendix. Hailu, in May, was declared brain dead by the doctors with no possibility of recovery and proposed on removing the life support

The family is a truly special thing. What makes a family so unique is that unification of a group of people with so many different characteristics. In fact, each and every one of our relatives contributes to that extraordinary bond families share in their own individual way. Our blood may define family, but it’s those unique relationships with the controlling grandmother, that crazy aunt, or even that inappropriately laid back relative that genuinely gives the family a special essence.

A family can be defined in many ways, but the common denominator in all is the love and fulfillment one gets by being surrounded by family members. Families can sometimes be at odds with each other, but the strain of this type of relationship usually creates an upsetting feeling to the people involved. People want others to rely on, talk to, do things with, share, love, embrace, and be part of. No matter what the family dynamic is the qualities the word family has will remain the same, as time goes by, and life evolves once again for every person living their