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Summary of Dear Life 

4.6 . 1833 reviews

Short summary

This summary is a memoir by British palliative health care practitioner Dr. Rachel Clarke. It contains stories about her life experience as a palliative health care doctor and her encounter with several dying patients. Dr. Clarke shares insights about her family, how she grew to become a doctor, as well as her views about life and death. She also discusses how and why she chose her specialty. Other books by Dr. Rachel Clarke include a best-selling memoir about her life as a junior doctor, Your Life In My Hands, and Breathtaking, a recent book that reveals the situation inside the NHS during the UK’s first wave of COVID-19. If you don't know what it feels like to be a palliative doctor, this summary will surely give you an intimate experience. “In medicine, needless to say, the moment you feel as if you’ve mastered something is invariably the point at which your next experience will knock you straight back down to earth.” ~ Dr. Rachel Clarke

Table of content

  • Summary of Dear Life
  • About the author
  • What is Dear Life about?
  • Who should read Dear Life
  • Topics in Dear Life
first key point

Death is an essential part of life, and discussing it is not to be avoided

Listen the first key point
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In this summary, you will learn about Dr. Rachel Clarke's life, her thoughts, beliefs, medical journey, successes, and failures. Today, it is possible to live an extended life, thanks to scientific advancements. Over 100 years ago, the human death rate was very high due to the limited health solutions and scientific inventions. But now, more humans believe and rely on their doctors and medical intervention.

Amid these growing technologies in medicine, Dr. Rachel Clarke chose to specialize in palliative health care, a specialty that most avoid. Death hovers around palliative medicine, which is a sad, emotional, boring, and challenging experience. But Dr. Clarke made her decision and realized that the part of the hospital that allowed her to flourish as a doctor was the ward most avoided: the inpatient palliative care unit.
What dominates palliative medicine is not the closeness to death or the thought of death but the best of the living.
Unlike popular thoughts, kindness, courage, love, and tenderness are the qualities that often emanate from a person in their last days. The idea of death can be disturbing, frustrating, chaotic, messy, and almost violent with grief. Still, many often accept that death is inevitable, and they try as much as possible to enjoy the last days of their lives. Unlike what many think, dying is the essence of living a beautiful, bittersweet, and fragile life.

This summary elaborates on the need to accept death as part of living and be prepared for it. The chapters in this summary further explain the job of palliative doctors as end-of-life caregivers and easers of pain in dying patients. It also discusses the dilemma of palliative health care doctors when having to influence a dying patient to accept that they are going to die.
Those who love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity. ~ Terri Guillemets
second key point

Dr. Clarke learned empathy in relating with patients after she was diagnosed with CIN

American playwright and teacher Margaret Edson, who once worked in an oncology department, wrote a drama about cancer entitled Wit. It was shown to Dr. Clarke on her very first day at medical school.
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third key point

CPR isn't for everyone; letting the frail go is a better decision

fourth key point

Palliative medicine is a wake-up call to treat dying patients better

fifth key point

The job of palliative care doctors is not to save lives but to help dying patients accept their fate

sixth key point

Accepting and talking about death helps you prepare for when it eventually happens

seventh key point

Conclusion

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What is Dear Life about?

Who should read Dear Life

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Do you find yourself staring at your computer for long minutes, unaware of time slipping by? Do you enter a room and suddenly cannot remember why you stepped in the first place? Is it a herculean task for you to sit through ten pages of a book without reaching for your phone? If yes, your focus needs some work and fast.

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