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Summer Read “Being Mortal” documentary screenings slated for this fall

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Photo by Frontline PBS

Atul Gawande meets a patient in Frontline: Being Mortal.

How should doctors help terminally ill patients prepare for death? Renowned author and surgeon Atul Gawande explores the relationships doctors have with patients who are nearing the end of life in the PBS FRONTLINE documentary Being Mortal. 

Join WITF’s Transforming Health, Aligning Forces for Quality- South Central PA and Central PA library systems for a series of FRONTLINE: Being Mortal community screenings this fall. Each screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A session hosted by WITF’s Ben Allen featuring local healthcare and end-of-life experts. 

Monday, September 28, 2015 at 6pm
Penn Cinema
541 Airport Road
Lititz, PA 17543
For free Tickets call the Box Office at (717) 626-7720

Thursday, October 8, 2015 at 6pm

WITF Public Media Center
4801 Lindle Road
Harrisburg, PA 17111
RSVP online

Monday, October 12, 2015 at 6 pm
Majestic Theater
25 Carlisle Street
Gettysburg, PA 17325
For free Tickets call the Box Office at (717) 337.8200

About the Film

Death is something we will all one day face. So why is it so hard for doctors to talk with their patients about dying? How can the medical profession better help people navigate the final chapters of their lives with confidence, direction and purpose?

Renowned surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande explores those questions in his best-selling book, Being Mortal Transforming Health’s 2015 “Summer Read” . Gawande also teamed with FRONTLINE (PBS) on a documentary that brings his personal journey — and the stories of his patients and their families — to life and challenges us all to reexamine how we think about death and dying.

“You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see, over and over and over again, how medicine fails the people it is supposed to help,” says Gawande, who practices at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“Hope is not a plan,” Gawande adds. “We find from our trials that we are literally inflicting therapies on people that shorten their lives and increase their suffering, due to an inability to come to good decisions.”

“Hope is not a plan.” 

–Atul Gawande

Three years in the making, the Being Mortal film explores the relationships between doctors and patients nearing the end of life, and shows how many doctors – including Gawande – struggle to talk honestly and openly with their patients who are dying. From the Indian hometown of Gawande’s father, whose prolonged dying process catalyzed Gawande’s quest to better understand end-of-life care, to the bedsides of patients in Boston who are navigating the ends of their lives, Being Mortal is an intimate and revealing journey with relevance to all of us.

This special series of community screenings and panel discussions will shine an unprecedented spotlight on how patients, families and doctors all experience the end stages of life, and encourage a national conversation about how to live life to the fullest extent possible. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life — all the way to the very end.

“Summer Read” is a partnership of WITF’s Transforming Health, Aligning Forces for Quality- South Central PA and Central PA library systems. It is supported by Capital BlueCross, WellSpan Health, and Penn State Hershey Medical Center.

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Photo by Frontline PBS

Hospital patient in Frontline: Being Mortal.