Books by Sharon R. Kaufman

A penetrating examination of how most Americans die today--how the patients and their families' conflicting desires about a "good death" collide with the politics and routines of American hospitals.

Sharon R. Kaufman examines the quandary of patients, families and doctors not knowing the point where enough medical treatment becomes too much treatment. A hidden chain of drivers among science, industry, new technology, and insurance spur this quandary, serving to obscure the ability to identify the difference between extraordinary and ordinary medicine.

This work on concerns arising from contemporary medicine, looks at the careers of a number of general physicians of 70 years ago who have become today's scientific specialists, and asks how they have responded to change, and what their hopes are regarding the profession's current directions.