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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. What does Gawande say a person is assured of, if their ashes touch the Ganges River?
(a) Eternal salvation.
(b) Eternal peace.
(c) Reincarnation.
(d) Forgetfulness.

2. What do the doctors from Uganda and the writer from South Africa say about American medical care?
(a) It clearly benefits the rich.
(b) It is biased against people of color and the poor.
(c) It is obviously wasteful.
(d) No one in their countries could afford it.

3. How many spoonfuls of Ganges water did Gawande drink, as part of his father’s funeral service?
(a) 4.
(b) 1.
(c) 7.
(d) 3.

4. What does Gawande say happens in the third stage of a country’s health care development?
(a) Patients die in poor houses and nursing homes.
(b) Patients die in the hospital.
(c) Patients return home to die in comfort.
(d) Patients die at home for lack of access to health care.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Bill Thomas overcome the institutional inertia that might have complicated his plans to introduce animals?

2. What did Gawande’s father make Gawande promise him?

3. How often does Gawande say he thought about elderly patients before the issue of geriatrics became an interest for him?

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

5. What does Gawande say is the problem with courage?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gawande say that end-of-life care costs affect the American medical system?

2. What was Bill Thomas’ idea for bringing more self-reliance to the residents of Chase Memorial?

3. How does Gawande say that dealing with elderly patients changed his medical approach?

4. What technique does Atul Gawande learn from a palliative care physician, and use with Jewel Douglass?

5. What are the three stages Gawande describes in medical development countries go through?

6. What compromises does Gawande make, to give Jewel Douglass a “palliative operation” (240)?

7. What definition of courage does Gawande arrive at, from his discussion of Plato’s Laches dialogue?

8. What is the cause that Gawande says Josiah Royce described as keeping people engaged in their lives?

9. How did Gawande and his mother differ on the question of how to handle Gawande’s father’s care as death came closer?

10. What was Bill Thomas’ experience prior to starting as the director at the Chase Memorial Nursing Home?

(see the answer keys)

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