Death Interrupted
How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die
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Narrated by:
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Robert Lee
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Written by:
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Blair Bigham
About this listen
Doctors today can call on previously unimaginable technologies to help keep our bodies alive. In this new era, most organs can be kept from dying almost indefinitely by machines. But this unprecedented shift in end-of-life care has created a major crisis. In the widening grey zone between life and death, doctors fight with doctors, families feel pressured to make tough decisions about their loved ones and lawyers are left to argue life-and-death cases in the courts. Meanwhile, intensive care patients are caught in purgatory, attached to machines and unable to speak for themselves.
In Death Interrupted, Dr Blair Bigham seeks to help listeners understand the options facing them at the end of their lives. Through conversations with end-of-life professionals - including ethicists, social workers and nurses and doctors who practise palliative care—and observations from his own time working in ambulances, emergency rooms and the ICU, Bigham exposes the tensions inherent in this new era of dying and answers the tough questions facing us all. Because now, for the first time in human history, we may be able to choose how our own story ends.
©2022 Dr Blair Bigham. Published by arrangement with House of Anansi Press, Toronto, Canada (P)2022 Bolinda PublishingYou may also enjoy...
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- Lessons in Living from the Front Lines of Medical Assistance in Dying
- Written by: Jean Marmoreo, Johanna Schneller
- Narrated by: Jean Marmoreo, Eve Crawford
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Written by: Jean Marmoreo, and others
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- Written by: Lisa Sanders
- Narrated by: Lisa Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Being Mortal
- Medicine and What Matters in the End
- Written by: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
-
-
Must read for life and death
- By Trinity on 2018-02-19
Written by: Atul Gawande
-
Extreme Measures
- Finding a Better Path to the End of Life
- Written by: Jessica Nutik Zitter M.D.
- Narrated by: Jessica Nutik Zitter M.D.
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jessica Zitter became a doctor because she wanted to be a hero. She elected to specialize in critical care - to become an ICU physician - and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from the brink of death. But then during her first code she found herself cracking the ribs of a patient so old and frail it was unimaginable he would ever come back to life. She began to question her choice. Extreme Measures charts Zitter's journey from wanting to be one kind of hero to becoming another - a doctor who prioritizes the patient's values and preferences.
-
-
Everyone needs to Read/Listen to this Book
- By Kathy M. on 2019-06-26
Written by: Jessica Nutik Zitter M.D.
-
Every Deep-Drawn Breath
- A Critical Care Doctor on Healing, Recovery, and Transforming Medicine in the ICU
- Written by: Dr. Wes Ely
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner, Dr. Wes Ely
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the next ten years, 40 to 60 million people in this country will be admitted to the ICU. Most of these hospitalizations will be sudden, unexpected, and harrowing experiences that can alter patients and their families physically and emotionally, with effects that endure for years. In this rich blend of science, medical history, profoundly humane patient stories, and personal reflection, Dr. Wes Ely describes his mission to prevent patients from being inadvertently harmed by the technology that is keeping them alive.
-
-
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Written by: Dr. Wes Ely
What listeners say about Death Interrupted
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2023-02-26
Information I really needed to hear!
As an ICU nurse I am faced with this dilemma every time I go to work. It was hard to articulate how I was feeling as no one truly understands unless you work in the field and this book hit all of the main points, and then some! I certainly learned a lot from this book and I believe it will make me a better medical professional for it. It certainly was cathartic to read and I recommend this for all medical professionals.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2023-02-26
Everyone needs to read this book!
Everyone needs to read this book! An excellent read that addresses the intersectionality of medicine, death, religion, ethics and society.
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- Michelle
- 2023-04-15
Wow, everyone needs to read this!
This is the topic that creates the most moral distress for myself at work. I have seen how technology makes people suffer a prolong death creating its own purgatory.
Death is the only certainty in life, but talking to your family about what is an acceptable quality of life for you, will help everyone make hard decisions when you cannot, and allow them to find comfort through the devistation.
Thanks Dr. Bigham for putting into words the ethical dilemma medical professionals like myself deal with constantly and showing the big picture, that technology can only go so far.
I highly enjoyed the read and suggest it to anyone.
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- Dawn S Fletcher
- 2022-10-05
Great Read
You know when you come across a book that rings so true to shake your head in agreement? Every page! I learned so much about the death dilemma that I didn't know I was having in my own work. Thank you for teaching me about how the debate over quality or quantity of life may have happened. Thank you for making me think about my questions differently and "turning them on their head". There is room for both saving lives and dying with dignity in our society. Articulating how much I enjoyed this book with all it's complexities and margins is difficult, You really have to read it. It's not an uncomfortable way to consider death, and is so far from offensive. This is written in only a way Blair could do it. The only critique I have is the narrator. Clearly not a medical person. Pronunciation of medical terms, and spelling out ECMO and PEG was a little frustrating, but I got over it quickly.
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- M.R.
- 2022-12-10
I needed to hear this book
I have always been a believer that if a person is in a state of ill health from where there is no hope of returning to good health, they and they alone has the right to a palliative pain-free and peaceful death.
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- Andrea Wood
- 2024-02-06
Amazing
I’m a palliative care nurse and absolutely loved this book. I found myself saying “yes!” Out loud while listening. Wish he had other books!
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- Amazon Customer
- 2023-11-07
Must read if interested in last moments on earth
Well written, a lot of information and thought and caring about planning death, a reality for all of us.
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- Anonymous User
- 2023-03-22
Good window into everyday death dilemmas especially in modern ICUs but he missed the mark on unbiased analysis
I’ve been an ICU nurse for many years, I’m 6 different hospitals and two counties
The author was able to capture many of the complexities around the dilemma in allowing people to die in these environments that offer extraordinary life extending measures, but often at the expense of the dignity of the patient
We absolutely need to get comfortable with speaking about death in our families, our places of work and in our primary care offices, so that the decision to “pull the plug’ ( if only there was one plug!!) is not left to a grieving family who believe they need to make this decision
The author however missed the opportunity to Garner the lived experience of the intensive care unit nurse who is at that patient’s bedside 24 hours a day - we journey with the patient and family and discuss so many of the challenges around this topic
My biggest critique is that the author became too wrapped up in his own ego, and those of his medical colleagues, and failed to recognize that he was very bias towards patients and families who hold religious traditions and beliefs. We seem to be all put into one category of ‘religious people’ his physician colleague, who practised MAID stated that people who are religious don’t feel they have any control. Therefore they’re probably going to be in ICU and choose extraordinary measures. The gigantic gross generalization was a palling I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t categorize all Black people as having a common response, or a common way of thinking unfortunately, it’s far more complex. You missed an opportunity here -would’ve been nice for you to explore that with more integrity
Memento Moro
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