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In Death Interrupted, ICU doctor Blair Bigham 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.

Doctors today can call on previously unimaginable technologies to help keep our bodies alive almost indefinitely. But this unprecedented shift in intensive care has created a major crisis. In the widening grey zone between life and death, doctors fight with doctors, families feel pressured to make tough decisions about their loved ones, and lawyers are left to argue life-and-death cases in the courts. Meanwhile, intensive care patients are caught in purgatory, attached to machines and unable to speak for themselves.

Through conversations with critical care and end-of-life professionals—including ethicists, social workers, nurses, and doctors—and observations from his own time working in ambulances, emergency rooms, and the icu, Dr. Blair Bigham exposes the tensions inherent in this new era of dying by addressing the tough questions facing us all.

DR. BLAIR BIGHAM is a journalist, scientist, and attending emergency and ICU physician who trained at McMaster and Stanford Universities. He was a Global Journalism Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and an associate scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others.

Blair Bigham's profile page

Bigham consults a number of experts in the field as well as combing his own experiences. … [Death Interrupted] explores a relatively new issue for which there are no easy answers.

Winnipeg Free Press

Skillfully written and well-researched, Death Interrupted offers a thought-provoking read.

Miramichi Reader