Being Mortal - Medicine and What Matters in the End (HM4015_O)
Textbook: Being Mortal
Author(s): Atul Gawande
Pre-Approved for:
Credit Hours: 16
Course Format
Homestudy, Certificate of Completion is available immediately upon passing the exam.
Course Overview
“Beautifully written . . . In his newest and best book, Gawande . . . has provided us with a moving and clear-eyed look at aging and death in our society, and at the harms we do in turning it into a medical problem, rather than a human one.” ―The New York Review of Books
“Masterful . . . Essential . . . For more than a decade, Atul Gawande has explored the fault lines of medicine . . . combining his years of experience as a surgeon with his gift for fluid, seemingly effortless storytelling . . . In Being Mortal, he turns his attention to his most important subject yet.” ―Chicago Tribune
Course Objectives
- Review how the process of aging, frailty and dying unfolds and explain how people experience the end of their lives.
- Discuss clinician's ultimate limitations, failures and successes in their efforts to deal with patients as their life draws to a close.
- Explain how an elderly person's ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life - all the way to the very end.
- Discuss the transformation of nursing homes from "total institutions" which emphasizes only "safety" to a semblance of home that creates a life of worth and freedom for the residents.
Course Outline
- Introduction
- The Independent Self
- Dependence
- Assistance
- A Better Life
- Letting Go
- Hard Conversations
- Courage
- Epilogue