The Evangelical hospice program has been a great experience for me thus far. This past semester, I looked forward to visiting patient Eileen every Friday. Eileen always smiled when I walked into her room. Although she did not remember me, I still feel as though we built a friendship throughout each visit. During my visits, I would push her wheelchair around the nursing home, take her on walks outside, help her feed the fish in the pond, and read the news to her. I began to build a personal relationship with her, hearing about her family and the traditions they had together. She told me how she loved school and pushed me to work hard in my classes so I will be successful one day. Additionally, she told me about her wonderful husband. It was so uplifting and such a great end to my week hearing about her romantic relationship with her husband. She loved him so much and would constantly talk to me about how great he was.
Apart from building a friendship with Eileen, I was exposed to many aspects of health care. First, each week I was there, I watched the nurse change Eileen’s stool bag. This was very interesting to watch and learn from the nurse why she had one and how it was surgically attached to her. Additionally, I learned how nurses and nursing aides work together. In times of an emergency, such as a patient falling, nurses on call would attend to this patient, and nursing aides would shift to attend to the patients, not in an emergency.
I believe that my experience watching nurses attend to a patient’s medical needs as well as observing teamwork in a healthcare setting will benefit me in my physician assistant school application. I have developed an interest in geriatrics that I did not have before, specifically in hospice care. I will communicate in my application how the evangelical hospice program gave me an opportunity to get patient care hours while being a student. Also, I will communicate how my experience with evangelical hospice care stemmed from my interest and outlook on a different field in medicine that I was not interested in before.
Additionally, the importance of building positive personal relationships with hospice patients has been evident throughout my time volunteering. I believe it is very important that any individual involved in providing care at a nursing home has a positive relationship with the patients and develops a sense of trust with their families, as they should be confident that their older loved ones are being well taken care of in the nursing home facility.
Overall, this program has humbled me and allowed me to be thankful that my grandparents are still completely healthy. It is very sad to see such kind elders in hospice care, knowing that their time is limited. This program allowed me to take advantage of the full 60 minutes I had with Eileen each week, hearing as much about her positive life as possible. I always had a smile on my face and tried to be the most positive influence I could be in her life, providing her with something to look forward to each week too.