The Golden Rule

Pollock, a consultant geriatrician, follows her debut The Book About Getting Older with eighteen more chapters built from three decades of bedside stories, impossible families, patients who refuse further treatment, the slow negotiations of end-of-life care. Her recurring point, drawn out case by case, is that good medicine for older patients is less about maximizing survival than about first understanding what a particular person actually wants from the time they have left, and that clinicians and families alike default too readily to "do everything" without asking. Reviewers have consistently praised the warmth and clarity of her case narratives over any originality of argument.