Anyone volunteered with Hospice?

[H and D]

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Hi all,
I am looking for a 'meaningful' clinical volunteer experience and came across volunteering with a Hospice organization. They require 20 hrs of training and a year long comittment which I could make but I am unsure if I could handle the realities of the experience. On the one hand I think I could learn more about medicine and people then working at a Hospital handing out magazines but on the other hand I have had very little direct experience with death.
I decided to apply to med school a couple of years out of college so it is hard finding good clinical volunteering opportunities besides a local hospital.
Does anyone have any advice or experience in this area?

 

[nintendo]

I've volunteered at a hospice for some time now and it is definitely what you make of it. It is up to the volunteer to go and be a presence so if you can do that in that setting than it will be a valuable experience.

I also volunteered at an ER, in terms of clinical experience, I gained much more exposure there, but hospice is a great place to quietly and personally relate with patients and their families.

 

[foofish]

Hi all,
I am looking for a 'meaningful' clinical volunteer experience and came across volunteering with a Hospice organization. They require 20 hrs of training and a year long comittment which I could make but I am unsure if I could handle the realities of the experience. On the one hand I think I could learn more about medicine and people then working at a Hospital handing out magazines but on the other hand I have had very little direct experience with death.
I decided to apply to med school a couple of years out of college so it is hard finding good clinical volunteering opportunities besides a local hospital.
Does anyone have any advice or experience in this area?

I volunteered at a hospice for a year, and it was hands down the best volunteering experience I've had (both clinical and non-clinical). I also stumbled upon hospice looking for a more meaningful experience than other clinical volunteer gigs I had done. The people who work in the field are usually incredible people, and you really see the compassion in medicine. Some moments were hard, but also the most rewarding...and it isn't all sad, it can also involve helping patients do some of the things they had always wanted to do but had never had the chance. I think that hospice volunteer coordinators are also sensitive to the fact that volunteers might have trouble with the work, and at least where I volunteered were incredibly supportive to the volunteers, too.

If you have any questions, feel free to pm me.

 

[NY Musicologist]

Hospice-volunteer-in-training here. Check these threads, which I started when I was first considering hospice as an activity:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=284985

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=284984

Along the way, I've become so interested in and impressed with hospice that I encouraged SDN to create a forum devoted to hospice and palliative medicine. It's located here:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=198

Things are pretty quiet at the forum, because it's only been open for a week or two, but I hope that anyone and everyone who's interested in hospice and related matters will come participate!

 

[45408]

I thought it was really boring, and I didn't really see or do much that was exciting (although it was a very unique experience to watch a patient die with his family all around him). I had 1000 times more fun and worthwhile experiences as an EMT doing 911 calls. I'd be hesitant about jumping into a year-long commitment. Ask if you can shadow another volunteer for a few hours at least.

 

[SeldomSeraphim]

Hospice = not fun. There is sick people almost everywhere and then they die. Kinda sucks I mean you build a rapport with the person and then they decide to die. Then you have to start from square one with your new person.Uggh.👎

 

[NY Musicologist]

Ask if you can shadow another volunteer for a few hours at least.

Privacy concerns (HIPAA) will almost certainly make this impossible. You may ask to be put in contact with a volunteer or two so that you can ask them questions, but that's more or less what you're already doing on SDN.

If you need a daily adrenaline rush, hospice may NOT be for you. But I think the poster who tried hospice but preferred EMT work in the end will come off as a very well-rounded candidate for having at least gotten the experience.

If you do pursue hospice, you can't go into it expecting that every encounter with every patient will be an amazingly fulfilling one. You might go for months without having what you would term a "meaningful" experience. But if you try it and stick with it, such a thing may come.

And in any case, even if YOU find it personally unfulfilling, the PATIENT and FAMILY who you are serving will probably still be very grateful, which in the end is what it's all about, IMO.

 

[Vvandenn]

I do Hospice work a few hours per week. I generally visit the patient wherever he or she is (their home, nursing home, etc) and help them out with anything they need, take them for walks, read to them, or simply just talk with them. Then I shadow the Hospice nurse around for a bit at times. So basically killing two birds with one stone (volunteering/clinical exposure, and some shadowing). I like it a lot; it's quite personal and the like. However, I also volunteer as an EMT to get my much-needed emergency medicine fix. 😎

 

[45408]

I don't see how HIPAA would be a factor in this any more than it would stop you from shadowing a doctor (it doesn't).

 

[NY Musicologist]

I don't see how HIPAA would be a factor in this any more than it would stop you from shadowing a doctor (it doesn't).

Well, maybe it's not prohibitive in all places. But in the training at my hospice, we were very clearly told that it was not OK for anyone not on the care team to visit a patient, even if accompanied by a team member. (We really got slammed with the HIPAA stuff...)

 

[foofish]

Well, maybe it's not prohibitive in all places. But in the training at my hospice, we were very clearly told that it was not OK for anyone not on the care team to visit a patient, even if accompanied by a team member. (We really got slammed with the HIPAA stuff...)

Too funny, because at the training at my hospice, we were required to shadow a volunteer to complete our training (this was after all of the standard medicare training, though). This was for an in-patient unit, though, which might have been the difference.

 

[bknycgrl]

Too funny, because at the training at my hospice, we were required to shadow a volunteer to complete our training (this was after all of the standard medicare training, though). This was for an in-patient unit, though, which might have been the difference.

Yeah, I guess some places are less restrictive than others. I will start my hospice training in a month or so, and I was told we could shadow a volunteer at the end of the training.

 

[NY Musicologist]

Too funny, because at the training at my hospice, we were required to shadow a volunteer to complete our training (this was after all of the standard medicare training, though). This was for an in-patient unit, though, which might have been the difference.

I see you're in Boston...were you with Beacon Hospice, by any chance? (hopefully I'm not violating the premises of HIPAA, SDN, etc. by asking!) 😱 🙄

 

[H and D]

Thanks for all the replies.
I think I will contact my local hospice about volunteering. I also plan to do some shadowing as well (even better if I can shadow a hospice md). Maybe if my schedule frees up a bit I can also volunteer at an ER, but right now my time is limited.