Books like Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End | Summary

Being Mortal, by writer Atul Gawande focuses on several critical issues that include death, aging, mortality and critical and terminal illness. The writer has included vast research and has chronicled stories and experiences of his own patients, patients of other doctors and stories of his members of the family. The story based on these experiences provides information to readers regarding various circumstances, life situations and scenarios, which can facilitate people to find an optimum journey through the final days of their own lives or the lives of their family members.Key Takeaways1.Nursing homes neither have been created for assisting elderly persons to reduce their level of dependency on another person nor to provide better options than the poorhouses. The purpose for creating nursing homes is clearing hospital beds.2.Assisted living therefore has risen from the requirement to provide alternative solution to nursing homes, which can make patients more independent and have a better grip over their own lives.3.Most people, in the later years of their own lives want something more than survival and that is where nursing homes, medical institutions and assisted living fail.4.People must question what makes life worth living at the time when they get old, are frail, ill and have to depend on another person for their daily care.