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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Gawande say his father always understood about life?

2. What did Gawande’s father make Gawande promise him?

3. What does Gawande say being mortal is about?

4. What does Kahneman say are our two selves?

5. When does Gawande say developments in the field of palliative will provide cause for celebration in medical circles?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gawande say goes into a “comfort pack” (162)?

2. How does Gawande say that dealing with elderly patients changed his medical approach?

3. How does Gawande describe what the real job of people in medicine should be?

4. What are the three stages Gawande describes in medical development countries go through?

5. What does Gawande say was the mistake his father made in his medical care?

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Gawande ending on a personal note?

7. How does Gawande characterize the work that remains to be done in medicine?

8. What are the instructions Gawande’s father left, for the disposal of his remains?

9. What are the priorities Gawande says people have, at the end of their lives, that go beyond “prolonging their lives” (155)?

10. What effect did Thomas’ changes have on the residents?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Have you or your family thought about plans or had discussions about care trajectories for the elder members of your family? What made those conversations possible, or made them impossible to have? Describe the impediments to holding these necessary conversations, and describe either how your family overcame them, or who stands in the way of having them? Why is it so hard to have these hard conversations?

Essay Topic 2

What are the key omissions in Being Mortal? Where is Gawande missing key points about Americans’ experiences of death and dying? How do class or gender change Gawande’s narrative? How do different peoples within America experience different realities than the story Gawande tells?

Essay Topic 3

Gawande does not say too much about the economic aspects of the questions he addresses, but families from different economic classes experience these problems differently. How does economics affect the outcome for aging and dying? How different are the poor from the middle class or from the wealthy, in this regard? Why do you think Gawande neglected to discuss class as an aspect of this problem?

(see the answer keys)

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