Being Mortal

by

Atul Gawande

A geriatrician is an expert in the health and care of the elderly. Gawande illustrates in Being Mortal that seeing a geriatrician rather than a regular primary care physician markedly improves people’s health in old age. However, Gawande points out that fewer people than ever are becoming geriatricians despite the population becoming generally older.

Geriatrician Quotes in Being Mortal

The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Geriatrician or refer to Geriatrician. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Medicine, Survival, and Well-being Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

Equally worrying, and far less recognized, medicine has been slow to confront the very changes that it has been responsible for—or to apply the knowledge we have about how to make old age better. Although the elderly population is growing rapidly, the number of certified geriatricians the medical profession has put in practice has actually fallen in the United States by 25 percent between 1996 and 2010. Applications to training programs in adult primary care medicine have plummeted, while fields like plastic surgery and radiology receive applications in record numbers. Partly this has to do with money—incomes in geriatrics and adult primary care are among the lowest in medicine. And partly, whether we admit it or not, a lot of doctors don’t like taking care of the elderly.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker)
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:

But the dismal finances of geriatrics are only a symptom of a deeper reality: people have not insisted on a change in priorities. We all like new medical gizmos and demand that policy makers ensure they are paid for. We want doctors who promise to fix things. But geriatricians? Who clamors for geriatricians? What geriatricians do—bolster our resilience in old age, our capacity to weather what comes—is both difficult and unappealingly limited. It requires attention to the body and its alterations. It requires vigilance over nutrition, medications, and living situations. And it requires each of us to contemplate the unfixables in our life, the decline we will unavoidably face, in order to make the small changes necessary to reshape it. When the prevailing fantasy is that we can be ageless, the geriatrician’s uncomfortable demand is that we accept we are not.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Dr. Juergen Bludau
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:
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Being Mortal PDF

Geriatrician Term Timeline in Being Mortal

The timeline below shows where the term Geriatrician appears in Being Mortal. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
The Evolution of End-of-Life Care Theme Icon
At the same time, there is a shortage of geriatricians in the medical profession, because it pays less compared to other jobs in medicine. Additionally,... (full context)
The Evolution of End-of-Life Care Theme Icon
...in on some patient visits in the geriatric clinic in his hospital with the chief geriatrician, Juergen Bludau. The doctor’s first patient, an 85-year-old woman named Jean Gavrilles, has lower back... (full context)
Medicine, Survival, and Well-being Theme Icon
The Evolution of End-of-Life Care Theme Icon
...high risk of becoming disabled. Half of them were randomly assigned to a team of geriatricians, while the other half were simply asked to see their usual physician. Within 18 months,... (full context)
The Evolution of End-of-Life Care Theme Icon
The geriatrics team simplified medications, controlled arthritis, and promoted overall health. But a few months after the... (full context)
Safety vs. Autonomy Theme Icon
Gawande meets Felix Silverstone, a national leader in geriatrics for five decades, when the man is 87 years old. Felix can feel his own... (full context)
The Evolution of End-of-Life Care Theme Icon
Felix has managed his old age well—particularly in finding a skilled geriatrician to help him. While there won’t be enough geriatricians to replace the retiring ones, geriatrics... (full context)