Atul Gawande Quotes About Aging
-
I talked to over two hundred patients and family members about their experiences with aging, serious illnesses, and the big unfixables. But I also spoke with scores of physicians, and especially geriatricians, palliative care doctors, hospice nurses, and nursing home workers. The biggest thing I found was that when these clinicians were at their best, they were recognizing that people had priorities besides merely living longer. The most important and reliable way that we can understand what people's priorities are, besides just living longer, is to simply ask. And we don't ask.
→ -
Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need.
→ -
We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.
→