One patient that stands out to me was a lady who had been in hospice for about a month. When I entered her room, she seemed to be asleep. I quietly introduced myself and saw that she briefly opened her eyes and then went back to sleep. I pulled up a chair and sat a few feet from her bed, reading quietly. After a nurse came into the room and woke her up to drink some juice, she turned to me and we began a conversation. The patient told me that the next morning, she was going to be moved to her son’s house to do hospice there. When I asked her if she was looking forward to being at home after spending so much time in the hospital, she said “I think it will be nice to be home, but I’m mostly looking forward to dying”. This comment was a bit jarring for me, as I had never heard death being spoken about so frankly in my previous experience and training as a hospice volunteer. What I found to be helpful from my training was to follow her lead, and listen more than I talked. The emphasis on listening and affirming the patient was something that I often thought of when I felt like I didn’t know how to respond in a situation. At one of the volunteer training sessions, we learned how to speak with patients and their families. This was very useful because it gave me an idea of how to conduct myself in this distinct setting. This patient and I spoke about her life growing up, her family, her hobbies, and her thoughts on her treatment and end of life. Instead of saying what I thought was best or steering the conversation to what I wanted to talk about, I did my best to take the back seat in the conversation and allow her to reflect on the things that made her most comfortable. I ended up spending about two hours in this patient’s room chatting, which was distinct from most of my other visits. I learned that each patient has different attitudes and needs.
Being a hospice volunteer has helped shape my future career goals because it gave me hands-on experience in a hospital setting. Learning something in a classroom or from a book are important first steps, but the opportunity to navigate patient interactions in a hospital helped me to evaluate where my strengths lie and identify areas I can improve. The experience of being a hospice volunteer transformed me because it broadened my outlook on life, medicine, and family. In my short life thus far, I had previously not spent much time thinking about my own death or considering how the end of one’s life looks. I viewed medicine in terms of fixing a problem, but I now know that in cases such as hospice, medicine has a more experiential goal. During my visits, I also came to see patients as more than isolated individuals, but as people who are parts of families and communities. I would describe the takeaways from this experience as being one that taught me to think in a typically unconventional way. My visits showed me the philosophical underpinnings on medicine that go beyond the hard science. One of the biggest benefits is that it prompted me to develop my soft skills by interacting directly with patients, their families, and hospital staff.