For the duration of my hospice volunteer experience, I\u2019ve had two patients – my experiences with both were drastically different. While both of them expressed their dissatisfaction with being placed in hospice care, my first patient wanted to avoid as many reminders of her situation as possible, eventually asking for me to not return. On the other hand, my second patient communicated with me that his everyday routine in hospice was so monotonous that any interruption was welcome.
\nI learned from both patients that hospice volunteering, and medicine in general, is not about prioritizing the individuals who are providing care. With both patients, I was told at least once that \u201cit wasn\u2019t a good time\u201d or that they \u201cdidn\u2019t want to talk.\u201d To be completely honest, after dedicating an hour to commute to the hospice care facility, it wasn\u2019t the greatest thing to hear. However, it taught me a really important lesson – sometimes you need to take yourself out of the situation and understand where other people are coming from. I might have been disappointed when I had to head home after only about ten minutes, but it was still valuable to be told \u201cno.\u201d I learned that medicine and volunteering isn’t supposed to be about just me wanting to help others, but about the communities being served and how they want to be served, if at all.
\nBeing a hospice volunteer has only increased my desire to go to medical school. I was already seriously considering pursuing geriatrics prior to being involved with hospice, but this experience has only solidified my decision. I\u2019ve gained a new perspective on the aging and dying process, and I\u2019d really like to explore that further academically and in my career.
\nIf I were to describe the benefit of Hospice volunteering on a medical school application, I would write about the ability to understand and empathize with patients from an entirely different perspective. One point of discussion in one of our meetings that resonated with me deeply was the fact that it is extremely easy, especially in hospice, for patients to become dehumanized. I can\u2019t really disagree with that – so far in my experience as an undergraduate student, a lot of what I\u2019ve heard about medicine is the courses you have to take and the extracurriculars and research you have to involve yourself in to become a good doctor. However, I\u2019ve realized that medicine at its core is about humans, and in order to properly treat humans we have to take the time to really connect and empathize with the people being treated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the duration of my hospice volunteer experience, I\u2019ve had two patients – my experiences with both were drastically different. While both of them expressed their dissatisfaction with being placed in hospice care, my first patient wanted to avoid as many reminders of her situation as possible, eventually asking for me to not return. On … Continue reading “Decentering Myself in Medicine”<\/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":[8],"program_year":[52],"class_list":["post-2141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospice","school-bryn_mawr","program_year-52"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141","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=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"program_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_year?post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}