Ms.Purple was a patient for me that always made my heart warm because everytime we saw her she was happy to see us even though really she didn’t remember who we were. She was always grateful for us coming to visit. It felt like we made her day better even though we weren’t there for a while. I learned about her life and the stories she told us. She taught me a lot about the push to keep going since I would tell her about how I am pre PA. With her passing I know death can happen anytime and anywhere. With the many deaths I’ve experienced, with her I felt I had more time to know her more simply because she was always excited to see us leave and talk about what we’ve talked about next in the future. With patient care, I have learned to be more intentional with my time especially since she wasn’t a family member to me. Also, over all, I know bonds have always been important with patient care but because this is the first patient I’ve worked with that has died it hit me in a shocking kind of way. As time doesn’t wait for you to build more and learn more about the person. As I have continued volunteering with hospice I have learned more about how to bond with elderly patients. I am now actually interested in working with the elderly. Before the main specialities I was interested in was neurology, pediatrics, and emergency med, now also geriatrics. This has impacted my personal life. I am always wondering what do the patients do when I am not there or I wonder if they are having fun or if they need help.
Volunteering in hospice care has been one of the most formative experiences in my journey toward medicine. It exposed me to a part of healthcare that is often overlooked what happens when treatment is no longer curative and the goal becomes comfort, dignity, and peace. This experience, along with Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, reshaped my understanding of what it truly means to care for someone.
Hospice volunteering taught me how to listen deeply. I wasn’t there to fix anything. There were no medications to administer or charts to update. Instead, I sat with patients during their days sometimes talking, sometimes just holding their hand. I learned that presence itself can be powerful. One woman told me about her childhood garden in South Carolina; another asked me to read her book aloud. These moments reminded me that patients are people with stories, not just diagnoses or prognoses. In hospice, medicine becomes profoundly human.
Being Mortal text helped me put this experience into perspective. Dr. Gawande’s exploration of end-of-life care showed how the medical field often prioritizes prolonging life over ensuring its quality. One line that stayed with me was, “Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.” Watching the documentary affirmed what I had witnessed in hospice: that people often want control, meaning, and connection more than they want another procedure. It made me question how often medicine chases life at the expense of living.
One of the most difficult lessons was learning to accept limits. As a future physician, it’s easy to want to solve every problem or extend every life. But in hospice, I came to understand the importance of honest conversations and shared decision-making. Patients deserve to know their options clearly and compassionately. I remember one family struggling with whether to continue aggressive treatments. The patient eventually chose hospice, and during my visits, I saw the peace that decision brought him. He was surrounded by family, free from invasive interventions, and able to focus on meaningful goodbyes. It reminded me that medical care should align with a patient’s values, not just medical capabilities.
Hospice work also challenged me emotionally. It required maturity to navigate sadness, vulnerability, and sometimes even fear. But over time, I became more comfortable with silence and more attuned to nonverbal communication. I learned to support grieving families, respect cultural and spiritual practices, and understand the depth of compassion it takes to sit with someone who is dying. These are not skills you learn from a textbook they come from experience, reflection, and a willingness to witness the fullness of life and death.
Ultimately, hospice volunteering and Being Mortal helped me realize that the art of medicine lies not only in diagnosis and treatment but in presence, empathy, and humility. They taught me that medicine is not just about adding days to life but about adding life to days. As I prepare for medical school, I carry this with me: the belief that healing sometimes means being there when a cure is no longer possible and that this, too, is medicine.