My time working in hospice care has been filled with important experiences, but I feel as though the relationships I developed with the patients were the most valuable. While there are a number of relationships I could speak about, I feel as though the experiences I had with a particularly challenging patient were the most insightful. This patient, John, was a man in his mid-90s who was fiery and passionate despite his frailty. He had no family left, but strongly stood by his faith and convictions, which he viewed as the aspect of his life that provided him with his strength. Unfortunately, John looked down on the patients surrounding him, seeing their suffering as a result of their lack of faith. By talking to John about this issue I learned that these feelings were rooted in worry and doubt rather than a sense of superiority. Although it was often difficult to approach these topics, especially while not disclosing my own religious beliefs, I became more understanding of the challenges that death presents to us, as well as the anxiety which lies in the hearts of many who do not feel that they are ready to leave.
I believe that this program and others like it provide critical experiences for a career in medicine. While the focus of healthcare is often curative, we must be prepared to deal with death’s challenges and its ultimate inevitability. It is easy to mistake healing for simply curing illnesses, but the process of healing also involves caring for those who will not survive their conditions. When I entered this program, I felt confident in my ability to handle death, especially as I had encountered it before in active clinical settings. But this experience introduced me to an idea of dying which was very different from the sudden loss of life witnessed in an emergency room. I grew to understand that I had only encountered one of morality’s many faces. In addition, I learned to better appreciate the need for care which is not curative, but empathetic. It is easy to lose sight of the value of human interaction, especially when the medical field focuses on eliminating conditions and reducing suffering.
Through this experience I have developed a greater sense of what my vocation should be. While the treatment aspects of medicine are valuable in their own right, to allow curative practice to become my obsession would be to lose sight of my work’s importance. It has forced me to deal with medicine’s ultimate fear: an inability to cure that which ails those we care about. Although it is not easy to experience this sense of futility, it has forced me to understand my role as being more than a prescription pad and set of diagnoses. I need to have more than simple skills in medicine. I need to be fluent in empathy, to speak a language of understanding, and to develop a connection which is deeper than patient statistics or health outcomes. I believe that this program has given me a more complete picture of medicine than any course or professor, and it has challenged my ideas of what a doctor should be. It has taught me valuable lessons about how I should strive to change the lives of others without losing sight of what it means to be human.