While serving as a hospice volunteer for the past few months, I have met several people in hospice along with their families. It’s interesting and exciting to listen to each person’s stories about their lives. One particular patient named Mary and her family changed how I viewed the end of life.
Mary had been in hospice for a while, since her daughter wanted someone to keep her mother company while she was at home. Because Mary’s eldest daughter recently died, her other daughter was planning the funeral during the weekend I visited. It was difficult to visit someone in hospice who was already grieving a loss. During the visit, I sat with Mary and we watched television and chatted about little things. Eventually, she went to bed before her daughter came back. Even though I did not do much during the visit, the daughter came back and was so thankful that I had been there. Her relief and appreciation for someone to just be with her mother really resonated with me.
I also realized that life doesn’t always go as planned. I think that is what makes this program important. Everyone I visited with in their homes and in the hospital were appreciative that someone was with their loved ones. Even though some of the patients were just sleeping or otherwise unresponsive, you knew how important being there was to them and their family.
This program is not only valuable to the patients, but to the volunteers as well. The program helped me grow as a person. It helped me gain a sense of bed side manners and communication skills with both the patient and their family. During my volunteer experience, I also have personally experienced death in my family. So I was able to understand and relate to my patient’s family and their potential feelings of helplessness and fear. In addition to caring for my patient, being able to comfort their family is another important part of hospice care.
Working in hospice care has given me a better sense of purpose in my career choices. Becoming a doctor is not only about curing people. Curing people only prolongs death, but death is inevitable. Being direct with patients and their families helps them cope with death. I want to help people in my career, and even though hospice does not help cure someone, it helps relieve pain and doubt in the patient and families. When families are grateful for my visit with their loved one in hospice, it makes me feel like I made a difference. All I want to do in life is help people and make them feel even just a little bit better. Working as a hospice volunteer has strengthened my desire to go to medical school and become a doctor. And now I will know that not everything has a cure. This acceptance of not always having control will help me as a doctor as well as my future patients.