Unfortunately, because of Corona I was unable to form a relationship with a patient, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t greatly impacted by this program. Throughout the course of this past year, and the reflection prompts that we have completed, I have greatly increased my knowledge about the dying process and have definitely become more comfortable with these topics. If I was going to describe the value of this program for a medical school application, I would describe a program that allowed me to form a better understanding of what a good death truly means and that sometimes there really is nothing that can be done by the doctor to prolong the inevitable, which is ok.
In thinking back to our first reflection prompt, Atul Gawande describes two “unfixables”, which are aging and dying. Doctors often times struggle with this since they feel pressure that they are supposed to be the ones to fix these problems, when in reality that is impossible. It is important to consider the impact that trying to postpone the inevitable can have on a patient. This program allowed me to see that people should not try to avoid death, but rather embrace it and live their life to the fullest, so that when their time comes, they can die more peacefully. These ideas were spoken about in Sunita Puri’s article “Lesson of Impermanence” in which she says “Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that ‘impermanence does not necessarily lead to suffering. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not’” (Puri 2019). In thinking about how much I have grown throughout this experience, it is clear that this quote represents a major theme that we have discussed throughout this past year and resonates with me greatly: suffering is a part of life, but how you perceive this suffering is what is going to impact you in the long run. I think that I have really developed this mindset this past year and agree with these overall themes of acceptance of death and the inevitable, which I can’t say was my mentality prior to the program. So I can definitely see the growth there. I have also grown in my ability to talk about death openly and be more comfortable and accepting of it. Lastly, the reflection prompts have affected me and my sense of vocation as someone who is pursuing a career in medicine, that it is important to gain exposure and learn about all the different aspects that medicine entails. This program has allowed me to delve deeper into the ideas surrounding death and how to best go about discussing these topics with others, which is a large part of the medical profession. In all, I really enjoyed participating in this program throughout this past year, and I think that I have developed essential skills that will definitely help me in my future endeavors!