The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life [Kindle Edition] Author: Ira Byock MD | Language: English | ISBN:
B005GSZJ16 | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life
You can download The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link A doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial social issues of our time.
It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Though the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home—which hospice care provides—many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to “fight disease and illness at all cost.”
Dr. Ira Byock, one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country, argues that how we die represents a national crisis today. To ensure the best possible elder care, Dr. Byock explains we must not only remake our healthcare system but also move beyond our cultural aversion to thinking about death. The Best Care Possible is a compelling meditation on medicine and ethics told through page-turning life-or-death medical drama. It has the power to lead a new national conversation.
Direct download links available for The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life
- File Size: 525 KB
- Print Length: 337 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1583334599
- Publisher: Avery; 1 edition (March 15, 2012)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005GSZJ16
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #194,326 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Physician & Patient > Hospice Care
- #33 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Alternative & Holistic > Holistic Medicine
- #47 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Hospice Care
Dr Ira Byock's new book, "The Best Care Possible" is one doctor's look at the inevitability we all face - death. Like taxes, death is a by-product of life and a "good death", while seemingly an oxymoron, is something Dr Byock has been writing about for many years. An "end-of-life" specialist at New Hampshire's Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Ira Byock works with a team to put together as good and gentle a death experience as possible for his patients.
Byock writes, that as we baby-boomers age, we're facing both the inevitable deaths of two generations - our parents, and then, in our turn, ourselves. As overall medical treatments advance, we're living longer and what used to kill us at earlier ages, doesn't do that so much anymore. And we're not dying as often in a family-setting. Most deaths occur in hospitals and nursing homes, with the dying tied up to machines that often keep them alive far past the point most people want to be kept alive. The old conundrum of "quality of life" vs "quantity of life".
Dr Byock's book is not a "how-to" guide to making a "good death". There are no steps he advises taking, but rather he speaks to the larger issue, from both a medical standpoint and a personal one. As a doctor in a smallish community, Byock often has to look at both views when treating his patients. He writes about teaching medical students at Dartmouth Medical School to be aware of the responsibilities as future doctors when medical treatments fail at arresting illness and the patient moves on toward death. And when advanced chemo might be granting a cancer patient a somewhat longer life span but at the cost of agonising side effects. When does a "good life" sequence into a "good death"?
The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life
There is a first time for everything, inclusive of posting comments to Amazon. Despite many years of online buying and hundreds of purchases, I admit to not having left a comment--until now. It's about time. Dr. Byock is compelling.
I literally know of no colleague in the field of bioethics who would admit to not having read Ira Byock's first book, Dying Well. It already has become a classic in our field. Dr. Byock's third book may well become another of that sort. He writes that well.
Who among us doesn't long for "the best care possible" when in need of health care for ourselves and those we love? The medical students and residents I teach and providers for whom I consult all strive for excellence in that regard. Why then does it elude us as a society? Why do so many of our elders and children still slip through the cracks of a notoriously expensive healthcare system with some of the best facilities and resources in the world? It is something of an enigma. Ira Byock is one of few people I know who can take this on with integrity and intelligence, grounded in decades of hands on, in the trenches, clinical experience.
We all have read and heard enough nonsense during recent years of highly politicized "healthcare reform" debates. It is refreshing then to read something provocative that also makes good sense. Byock tells a good story, of course. "Masterful" is the adjective that comes to mind. But this book is more than gripping narrative. It is an insightful ethics analysis and a rational policy proposal. In the end, what it boils down to, is . . .
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