#26: Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die with Blair Bigham

Sounds About Right: Audiobooks to Help Us Understand the World

Dr Blair Bigham an award-winning journalist, scientist and physician who trained in emergency and critical care medicine at McMaster and Stanford Universities. He was a Global Journalism Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Associate Scientist at St Michael’s Hospital. His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, newscasts, podcasts and medical journals. He is co-host of the CMAJ Podcast and deputy editor at healthydebate.ca.
I sat with Dr Bigham and discussed with him his first book, Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die. In the book, he shares his first-hand experiences of how medicine has complicated the way we die and offers a road map for dying in the modern era.

Some of the topics we discussed includes:

• How too much medicine has caused this new grey zone area
• Did Dr Bigham's outlook on what it means to be alive change once he transitioned from being a paramedic to a ICU Physician?
• What contributed to us as a society being less comfortable to talk about death?
• How does technology prevent death from coming too soon but also prevent its timely arrival?
• What can doctors and physicians do to have more of a relationship with a patients family
• During the process of writing and researching for the book, was there anything said to Dr Bigham which made him reflect deeply?

The Book and Audiobook: Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die is out now.
You can also Follow Blair on Twitter @BlairBigham
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