View a FREE sample

Introduction

The following version of this book was used to create this Lesson Plan: Gawande, Atul. Being Mortal. Metropolitan Books, 2014; Picador Press edition, 2017. Paperback version.

Introduction

• Atul Gawande says that he never learned about mortality in his medical studies. He says that he and his fellow students studied mortality by reading Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych, in which Ilych, a high-ranking social servant, falls ill and dies in misery.

• Based on his discussion of the Tolstoy story, Gawande says that modern doctors too often fail at “character and culture” (2), insofar as they care for the medical experience, but not the human experience of the person suffering the illness or condition; he says that he himself was not prepared to confront the “realities of decline and mortality” (3).

• Gawande describes the case of Joseph Lazaroff, a patient who was in his sixties, dying of cancer; Gawande says that Lazaroff...

(read more Chapter Abstracts)

This section contains 10,227 words (approx. 35 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample