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APTA PA Book Club - Session 1
Tuesday, August 17, 2021, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EDT
Category: Committees

The Membership Committee would like to invite you to join us for some summer reading.  The summer reading book has been selected and is sponsored by the Ethics Committee. 

How it works:

  1. Read the book!  (Because we know how busy summer can be, we are giving you some extra time for this).
  2. Join one of  the virtual book discussions on August 17th at 7 pm OR August 19th at 8 pm.  (Registration for these discussions will open one week in advance). 

The Book:  Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

About the Book:

In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.