While I have not had the experience of interacting with any Hospice patients yet, I know that I\u2019ve learned a lot just from replying to the prompts and completing the training. Prior to this year, I never gave much thought to dying and the moments leading up to it, but now, I\u2019m aware. I\u2019m aware of the grief the family must be feeling, and the confusion, anger, or peace the patient must feel. As of now, I haven\u2019t experienced a close death, but my grandmother suffers from Dementia and I\u2019ve seen how difficult it is to lose someone that\u2019s still physically here. Watching her mental decline and reverting back to an almost child-like mind has been sad to watch, but going through Hospice has changed my perspective on the issue. Instead of comparing my grandmother to what she once was, I should embrace every moment I have with her as who she is now. In training, when we went over how to deal with patients with Dementia, it gave me closure knowing I wasn\u2019t alone in what I was going through. Already, my perspective has changed on how I view and handle approaching death, and I can only imagine how much further I\u2019ll grow when I get more experience.
\nBeing a part of this program is invaluable to my future medical school application because it offers me a different perspective and experience that other applicants wouldn\u2019t have. I\u2019m able to experience the part of medical care where medicine can\u2019t solve the problem, and patients have resigned to that thought. They\u2019ve accepted the thought of dying, and I believe in that acceptance there\u2019s a clarity that\u2019s rarely seen in other parts of the medical field. Being able to describe that experience and having the responsibility of passing along memories and stories the family would love to hear is an enriching responsibility. By participating in this program, I\u2019m gaining more face-to-face interaction with the patients and able to form a relationship with them, or at least more so than other volunteer medical positions. I\u2018m also able to see how patient care is done when the object isn\u2019t treatment, but making the patients as comfortable as possible. Talking about this program offers a unique experience that will set me apart from other applicants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While I have not had the experience of interacting with any Hospice patients yet, I know that I\u2019ve learned a lot just from replying to the prompts and completing the training. Prior to this year, I never gave much thought to dying and the moments leading up to it, but now, I\u2019m aware. I\u2019m aware … Continue reading “How I’ve Grown”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"school":[15],"program_year":[44],"class_list":["post-1683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospice","school-swarthmore","program_year-44"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1767,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions\/1767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"program_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_year?post=1683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}