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In This Issue:
From left: Julio Frenk, dean of faculty at Harvard School of Public Health; Michael Zinner, chair of Surgery; BWH President Betsy Nabel; Samuel O. Thier, professor of medicine and health care policy, emeritus, at Harvard Medical School; Atul Gawande; Jack Connors, chair emeritus at Partners; and Gary Gottlieb, president and CEO of Partners, at a special event honoring Gawande
There were a lot of subjects that Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, learned about in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them.
“My professors, fellow students and I thought we wanted to learn about how the human body works, how it goes wrong and ways we can fix it,” said Gawande, a renowned BWH surgeon, writer and researcher and executive director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at BWH and the Harvard School of Public Health.
After caring for patients nearing the end of their lives and contending with health problems that couldn’t be solved, Gawande felt he didn’t fully understand how to be helpful in these situations.
Wanting to learn more, he set out to interview patients, family members, physicians, home health aides and others from BWH and across the country about what matters in the end. Through these interviews, Gawande came to understand that many people have priorities at the end of their lives besides simply living longer.
During a Dec. 4 Quality Rounds in Bornstein Amphitheater, Gawande, author of “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,” took the audience through an exploration of what growing old means today. He gave examples from his book of people he has met who only had days to live but still maintained qualities of life that were important to them.
One of those people was his neighbor and daughter’s piano teacher, Peg, who had pelvic cancer. Though her treatments stopped working and her cancer spread, she told doctors and nurses that she didn’t want to die in a hospital. She wanted to go home and focus on each day she had left. While it took much medical expertise to make this possible, Gawande said Peg thrived more in the days after she was discharged home than she had in a long time. Her pain was under control, and she was able to focus on teaching piano again, something she loved. She lived for six more weeks in hospice and died peacefully at home.
“I think in medicine, we have forgotten how incredibly vital it is for people to be able to pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, connect with loved ones and make some lasting contributions to the world at the end of their lives,” he said.
Gawande Appointed Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School BWH recently celebrated the appointment of Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, as the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
During the event, BWH President Betsy Nabel, MD, and other leaders thanked Gawande for his extraordinary contributions to American medicine and the BWH community.
“You are a champion of surgeons everywhere and have set the bar high for all of us to continuously improve,” Nabel said. “By so carefully considering the needs of patients and families, you have contributed to our understanding of how best to prepare and empower all of our patients so they can effectively and appropriately manage their health care through all of life’s stages.”
View a recording of Quality Rounds.
Gawande Appointed Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School
BWH recently celebrated the appointment of Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, as the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.