Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End is a book by surgeon Atul Gawande. Published in 2014 by Metropolitan Books, the book explores Gawande's profession as a surgeon and the challenges faced as he attempts to save lives. Along the way, he is faced with inevitable limitations that even the most skilled professional cannot evade. He majorly touches on how medicine can be a detrimental tool in whether a patient is saved or lost in the process of treatment.
In recent history, medicinal solutions have had a revolutionary leap in the amount of disease and complications that can be solved. While they've been major progress in that aspect, it cannot be overlooked that the inevitability and negative outlook of aging and death has pretty much not changed for centuries. Gawande argues that due to the great development of medicinal solutions, we have unequivocally prolonged suffering and make death an even more heavy ordeal to process.
Gawande's book and work as a surgeon offer a dignified alternative to terminally ill patients who have been plagued with old age and untreatable diseases. Today's medical society has made death even more traumatic to process as we seek to find solutions even against impossible odds. Thus, prolonging the suffering of patients who'd otherwise appreciate the swiftness of an easy and less traumatic death on the loved ones.
Upon its release, Being Mortal was awarded the 2014 Royal Society of Biology General Book Prize, long listed nominee for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, and Goodreads Choice Award.
