Throughout my time as a hospice volunteer, I have realized that end of life care is a lot more than providing comfort and assistance to a patient in their final stage of life. There are a lot of emotions involved and it is important to understand what the patient wants out of their hospice experience. Currently, I am assigned to a patient who has been diagnosed with hypoxia and other additional diseases with an estimated six months to live. A lot of the time our conversation is friendly and surface level, as I serve as an outlet whom he can talk to about anything. He is quite the talker and is usually not fully aware of what is going on. Oftentimes, I will just listen and occasionally ask questions as he tells me his stories.
There was one instance, however, where he was telling me about his family but then spiraled into being very upset as he was talking about family members who are no longer living. This made him very reflective of his own situation, in which he asked me “what does it all mean anymore?”. This question put me in an uncomfortable situation as I am 21 years old, in good health, and have not experienced a full life. It was in this moment that I realized my role as a hospice volunteer. I was not there to tell him that everything is going to be okay or that his family is in a better place. Rather, I let him keep talking and recognized the power of listening. Sometimes, people just want to have a companion that will listen to them. I realized that not all my visits need to be an uplifting boost to the patient’s day. It would be great if that were the case, but in reality, being in the end stages of life comes with a lot of emotion and reflection. So it is important to be able to listen and learn from the patient and to potentially use that information further down the line.
From this experience, I also learned that it is okay to be caught off guard and have these real human moments with a patient. I am grateful to have these types of experiences with patients because I think that it prepares you more for the future. Now I believe that I will be better equipped to deal with a similar situation, and I feel that this type of training only comes with real clinical practice.
I think that the lessons that I have learned from my hospice experience extend way beyond end of life care. Being able to listen to the concerns of patients and validate their feelings is essential to building that physician-patient trust. If you brush aside the concerns of your patient, they will not feel like they are being heard and are probably less likely to follow your instructions of future care. To me, trust is one of the fundamental components of the medical sector because people put a lot of faith in their doctors and medicine to take care of them. Once this trust is broken, it is very hard to rebuild. Thus, I think that everyone who enters the medical field needs to hold themselves to the highest of standards and work to provide the best possible care for their patients.