One of my most meaningful relationships that I developed during this hospice volunteer program has been with the husband of my patient. Over the past few months, we would play cards and keep my patient involved and talking as much as possible. However, even on the days when my patient wasn’t able to make it of bed, I would still stay and hangout with his husband. I always stayed because I have been able to see his health deteriorate just as much as my patient’s. He moves slower, is much more forgetful and gets confused much more often than he did in the first few weeks of my visit. All though he is not my dedicated patient, I still felt responsibility to help keep him mentally active. In some ways, he as the caretaker for his husband has been limited to what he could do and that has brought some wear and tear on his body.
To a medical school, I would highlight the patient interaction experience. This program was so beneficial because it allowed me to interact one-on-one with my patient, or one-on-two (patient and spouse). Therefore, I was able to improve my communication skills and became better at interacting in a positive way. Additionally, I was able to work with patients who experienced mental decline and mental diseases, which better prepares me to work with that patient group in the future.
Beyond benefiting my medical school application, this program has allowed me to grow personally. Some weeks when I arrive, my patient is doing very well and is able to interact effectively. However, there are some days where he isn’t able to stay awake or feels stressed. These days are much harder to make effective visits out of but it demonstrates the difficulty of the work. Not all my visits are perfect, but I try to make them the best I can and provide helpful verbal and emotional interaction. I have become more comfortable and more aware of how the process of aging and death proceeds. I have learned to adapt to how my patient is feeling and act based on his responses. Since death is a hard subject, I feel that this program has helped me mature on how to deal with it.
This experience has given me the drive to continue to pursue the medical field even more. The reason I want to become a doctor is due to the patient interactions. Hospice deals with the sadder side of medicine and it was important for me to see if I was able to deal with it effectively. I have been very fortunate that death has not affected my life to a great extent. I wanted to make sure I would be able to handle patients who were declining in health so that I was sure I would be able to go into a career that deals directly with death. It also taught me that medicine isn’t always about fighting off death. The inevitability of death is hard to deal with but it highlights a point that if medicine was only about preventing death, then medicine would always eventually fail. There becomes a time when instead of fighting it off, there should be a transition to enjoying your last moments and focus on being comfortable in the process, whether it be moments, days, or weeks. This is what hospice was able to teach me. It made something that I was extremely uncomfortable with become a little less uncomfortable.