A surgeon and best-selling author shares some of his latest work.

When I read the first sentence of Being Mortal, I knew the way I thought about doctors was about to change.

Like many people, I tend to put blind faith in doctors' medical expertise. I've always believed, on some level, that their deep understanding of what causes death gives them a better-than-average grasp of how we should treat those who are coming to the end of life. But as Gawande – a practicing surgeon and public-health researcher – admits in the first few lines of his best-selling book, doctors don't always have the answers.

"I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them," he writes. A surgeon might be able to prolong life by performing the miraculous in an operating room, yet lack the knowledge and tools to give their patient a "good" death. And while "miraculous" procedures may extend life, they often hinder its quality (or rob patients who are unable to speak for themselves of the treatment they would have chosen.)

Gawande raises many questions about the modern approach to aging and death, and offers possible solutions. He shares examples of how doctors can prepare patients for the changes brought by aging, helping them to retain the greatest possible degree of dignity and autonomy. He proposes new models for end-of-life care that focus on helping patients live their fullest life right up until the end.

We're pleased to share with you an excerpt from "Being Mortal," and hope you'll find it as thought
provoking as we have.

Introduction

I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them. Although I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term, that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy. Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point. The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise.

Halley Burns is a writer and editor based in Chicago. Connect with her on Twitter at @halley_rosetta. Originally published January 2015