Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, BEING MORTAL asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.