View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What percent of Americans does Gawande say died at home at the end of the second World War?
(a) 32%.
(b) 17%.
(c) 44%.
(d) More than half.

2. How does Gawande characterize his faith in Hinduism?
(a) He says that he is a hostile skeptic.
(b) He says that he is a fervent believer.
(c) He says that he is practical, and it does not matter what he believes if he follows the rites.
(d) He says that he is not much of a believer.

3. What is moksha?
(a) Release from suffering.
(b) Assurance of justice.
(c) Liberation from earthly life.
(d) Forgiveness for sins.

4. How does Gawande characterize the phase of cultural development we are in, with regard to care for the sick and dying?
(a) Transitional.
(b) More institutional.
(c) More medicalized.
(d) More spiritualized.

5. What does a patient base their impression of pain on, according to researcher Daniel Kahneman?
(a) A snapshot of the most painful moment.
(b) The residual pain at the end of the procedure.
(c) The most painful and the last moments of a procedure.
(d) An average of all the pain in the procedure.

6. Why does Dave Galloway say he does not want to take his pain medication when his cancer is troubling him?
(a) He says that it takes him from his wife and child.
(b) He says that it makes him panic to be so close to death.
(c) He says that it feels like a defeat.
(d) He says that it makes him depressed.

7. What does Gawande say his father always understood about life?
(a) That if it is lived well, there is no mourning, only celebration.
(b) That it was not his to lose or grieve.
(c) That it was a gift and he could not be upset about losing it.
(d) That it is short and his place in the world was small.

8. How many oncologists does Gawande admit to providing treatments they know will not work?
(a) 30%.
(b) 50%.
(c) 60%.
(d) 40%.

9. What percentage of doctors in Nicholas Christakis’ study overestimated their patients’ survival time?
(a) 49%.
(b) 19%.
(c) 63%.
(d) 37%.

10. What was the first place Gawande’s father wanted his ashes scattered?
(a) Sacramento, California.
(b) New York city.
(c) Cleveland Ohio.
(d) Athens, Ohio.

11. What does Gawande say he connected himself and his father to, by scattering the ashes in the Ganges?
(a) Something larger than themselves.
(b) Father Time.
(c) Mother Earth.
(d) Their ethnic people.

12. By what rate did the death rate decline at Chase, after the introduction of animals?
(a) 15%.
(b) 20%.
(c) 38%.
(d) 42%.

13. What argument does Gawande give for preventing people from committing suicide?
(a) Pain is often temporary.
(b) People do not always know their desires.
(c) Society knows better than the individual.
(d) Society has an interest in keeping people on board.

14. What does Gawande say the surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic recommended for his father’s tumor?
(a) Waiting and watching.
(b) Immediate operation.
(c) Treatment with radiation.
(d) Palliative surgery.

15. What does Gawande say being mortal is about?
(a) Working with the constraints of biology.
(b) Knowing the spirit.
(c) Transcending death.
(d) Being grateful for life.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the second place Gawande’s father wanted his ashes scattered?

2. What did Gawande’s mother want for her husband, when he was dying?

3. What does Kahneman say are our two selves?

4. What is the ars moriendi?

5. Of the people who died in hospice care in the U.S. in 2010, what percent does Gawande say died at home?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 608 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample