Bristol Festival of Ideas: Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande
Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine, and What Matters in the End
Fri 9 October 2015, 18:30-19:30
At-Bristol
£7 / £6

Atul Gawande examines his experiences as a surgeon, and confronts the realities of ageing and dying in his patients and in his family, as well as the limits of what he can do. He explores questions that range from the curious to the profound: What happens to people’s teeth as they get old? Did human beings really commit senecide, the sacrifice of the elderly? Why do the aged so dread nursing homes and hospitals? How should someone give another person the dreadful news that they will die?

Gawande observes that the systems that have evolved to govern our mortality routinely fail to serve – or even acknowledge – people’s needs and priorities beyond mere survival. And the consequences are devastating lives, families, and even whole economies. But, he argues, it doesn’t have to be this way.

BIOGRAPHY

Atul Gawande is a surgeon, writer and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is also Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He writes regularly for the New Yorker, and is the author of Better, Complications and The Checklist Manifesto.

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