My experience with the hospice program was a fantastic experience and incredibly beneficial in developing my interpersonal skills specific to a medical-type environment. Interacting with patients and family members who are part of this program has given me the opportunity to rethink my outlook on what is the goal of medicine. For many patients who are part of the program, the end goal is to make sure that they have a good death rather than spend time they do not have on treatments that might not work. It is at this critical moment when my job as a volunteer comes into play. I get to help patients and family members navigate this path. My goal was never to force them into one way of thinking or another; instead I helped these patients find out what a good death was for them. Going into this program, I imagined that it to be a more taxing experience as I was essentially guiding patients in their final moments of their life. However, my experiences in the program have contradicted that entirely. It is true that there is a sense of grief involved whenever a patient passes, but there is also a sense of closure that helps deal with those feelings of grief. Patients often left on their own terms and were able to finalize their wishes and have a good death. In my personal experience, it was comforting to know that for many of my patients, they did not pass away full of regret or sadness but they were able to have some sense of closure in their lives prior to their passing.
One experience that has stuck with me the most is a weekly call I have with a patient “Jill” and her daughter “Tracy”. For my first call, I talked with “Tracy” who warned me that her mother was a more reserved person who was also slightly more abrasive, so she wanted to apologize in advance for anything that her mother might have said. My first conversation with “Jill” was rather short as she refused to talk and seemed very adamant that she did not want to talk with a volunteer about how she was feeling. Rather than give up hope, I began to try alternate approaches for my next call. I spent more time talking with “Tracy” and was able to find topics that her mother enjoyed talking about. When it came time for me to talk with “Jill” again, rather than focus on how she was feeling, I decided to just ask her questions about her own life, her life experiences, and her pets in order to understand her as a person rather than as a patient. After some time, I was able to transition my questions into understanding how she was feeling and I was able to get her to slowly open up as we talked. Our first call was towards the end of November 2020, and now we greet each other like good friends. It is an experience I think I never would have been able to experience elsewhere. Through the skills I learned through the hospice program, I was able to completely change the way I interacted with her and it gave me vital experience in working with someone who may be more reserved and trepidatious when it came to talking about what was bothering them.
Prior to the hospice program, I believed that the goal of medicine was ultimately to cure sickness. I saw my future in the medical field as pursuing that goal to treat my patients and cure their ailments. The hospice program has made me understand what is a more appropriate goal of medicine. The revised goal of medicine in my mind is to alleviate pain and/or suffering, whether that be pain of the body or of the mind. This program has taught me that there is not always a cure, and there is nothing wrong with being unable to cure a terminally ill patient. Once we have exhausted a certain threshold of medical interventions, it then comes the time to decide what to do: should a patient continue to fight or should they begin the process of resolving matters in their own life in order to pass away on their own terms. Now I am better able to understand both paths at this fork in the road, and in the future, I hope that this can help me interact with my patients no matter which path they decide is best for them to pursue.