Why are you interested in mortality?
Medicine is grappling with what is ultimately an unsolvable problem. I never felt I had good answers for people who were facing death; when do we push ahead with treatments and when do we not? It wasn't until I connected with experts working in palliative care that I began to gain a sense of how you can unravel these problems. At the centre of the issue is the difference between the medical priorities of health, safety and survival, and an individual's priorities for well-being.
Has medicine got its priorities wrong?
We make trade-offs every single day. For my patients in nursing homes, often their biggest struggle is with things being taken away from them, in the name of health, that they care deeply about. You'll see people with Alzheimer's who want nothing more ...
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