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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Gawande characterize the similarity between nursing homes and prisons?
(a) They are both state-run.
(b) They are both punitive.
(c) They both house mostly poor people.
(d) They are both total institutions.

2. What does Gawande say he felt about the dead people who showed up in his dreams?
(a) That he was responsible for their souls.
(b) That they had come to kill him.
(c) That he had killed them.
(d) That he had betrayed them.

3. When does Gawande say people started to go to doctors, instead of doctors coming to them?
(a) After the 1970s.
(b) After World War I.
(c) During the Depression.
(d) After World War II.

4. What does Gawande say was the concept Wilson incorporated in her assisted living facility idea?
(a) That residents are happier when they help each other.
(b) That economies of scale require at least 86 residents per pod.
(c) That each resident has the right to their own priorities.
(d) That costs come down if people are happier.

5. How does Gawande characterize the plot of a person’s health for most of history?
(a) A series of minor decreases in a slow decline toward death.
(b) A high line that runs flat then falls quickly.
(c) A series of dips followed by recoveries that approach the horizontal axis of death.
(d) A high line that ends abruptly.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where did Del Webb, who popularized the term “retirement community” build his first development?

2. When does Gawande say he started to experience dead people?

3. How did Gawande’s grandfather and his wife avoid starving to death as newlyweds?

4. How does Gawande say Alice’s family dealt with her depression?

5. What does Lou Sanders’ daughter Shelley compare him to when he comes to live with her and her family?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gawande say Keren Brown Wilson ended up starting her first assisted living facility in the 1980s?

2. How does Gawande use graphs to characterize the decline of people’s health?

3. How is the story of Lou and Shelly different from Alice Hobson's death?

4. How does Gawande describe his personal reaction to his patients’ deaths?

5. What does Gawande say he learned from Mabel Nassau’s study of elderly people in Greenwich Village?

6. What is the triumph in the story of Felix and Bella Silverstone?

7. What was Lou Sanders’ experience of assisted living like?

8. How does Gawande characterize Ivan Ilych’s experience of dying?

9. What is rectangularization, and how does it affect society?

10. How does Gawande characterize the finances of geriatrics?

(see the answer keys)

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