Is Hospice Care a good clinical experiences for med school?

[yaqingzhang]

dear friends,
I am a pre-med and have some questions about medical school requirement. I am looking for clinical/hospital experiences now and wondering what kind is the best. Typically, my plan is to volunteer on hospice care. Because this is not a traditional shadowing way, do you think it will be a good option? thank you ~~

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[MollyMalone]

dear friends,
I am a pre-med and have some questions about medical school requirement. I am looking for clinical/hospital experiences now and wondering what kind is the best. Typically, my plan is to volunteer on hospice care. Because this is not a traditional shadowing way, do you think it will be a good option? thank you ~~

I think it would be excellent clinical experience as long as you are doing it because you are interested in it and not just to pad your app (I'm not insinuating that you are, just cautioning against it).

 

[diosa428]

I volunteer on a hospice unit and think that it is a great experience. It has shown me a whole different perspective on patient care. I also get to work with patients a lot, although I mostly help the nurses turn the patients, change their sheets, etc. Sometimes, when the patients are alert, I can sit with them and keep them company. However, the doctors aren't on the unit a lot, so it's not really like shadowing. I've also shadowed a couple of different doctors and it's a completely different experience. But I would highly recommend it anyway.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

It's certainly a better experience than anything you'd get from shadowing a family practice doc in a nice part of town. You will get to witness the down side of medical practice- that not everyone lives and ethical decisions are not always easy or simple.

 

[sen]

I volunteer on a hospice unit and think that it is a great experience. It has shown me a whole different perspective on patient care. I also get to work with patients a lot, although I mostly help the nurses turn the patients, change their sheets, etc. Sometimes, when the patients are alert, I can sit with them and keep them company. However, the doctors aren't on the unit a lot, so it's not really like shadowing. I've also shadowed a couple of different doctors and it's a completely different experience. But I would highly recommend it anyway.

I agree with Diosa here...volunteering at a hospice can be very rewarding, especially if you enjoy chatting/hanging out with the elderly. You will also get much much more patient exposure at a hospice than you will in most other clincal experiences in the United States. But as diosa said, there will not be much shadowing here, so it would probably be best to complement this experience with a shadowing experience in a hospital or with a family practice doctor etc, at least for two weeks or so during a vacation.

 

[Adcadet]

You will get to witness the down side of medical practice- that not everyone lives and ethical decisions are not always easy or simple.

I volunteered with a hospice for 6 years before medical school, and I strongly disagree. Praetorian is implying that hospice care is part of a medical failure to affect a cure, and in this regard he's correct. But in many ways in hospice I also saw the very best medicine had to offer. Medicine is not always about curing, but it's always about caring. Hospice work will help you realize that even as a lowly pre-medical student (or medical student now in my case) you can offer the patient something more powerful than any medicine or surgery.

Now that I'm in my clinical years (and my internal medicine rotation in particular, where the average age is 80 and end of life issues are common), I can say with conviction that my hospice work was excellent preparation for medical school and beyond.

 

[Adcadet]

I agree with Diosa here...volunteering at a hospice can be very rewarding, especially if you enjoy chatting/hanging out with the elderly. You will also get much much more patient exposure at a hospice than you will in most other clincal experiences in the United States. But as diosa said, there will not be much shadowing here, so it would probably be best to complement this experience with a shadowing experience in a hospital or with a family practice doctor etc, at least for two weeks or so during a vacation.

I too totally agree. In doing hospice stuff you won't see doctors working much if at all. Set up some shadowing experiences at a minimum to compliment your hospice work.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

I volunteered with a hospice for 6 years before medical school, and I strongly disagree. Praetorian is implying that hospice care is part of a medical failure to affect a cure, and in this regard he's correct. But in many ways in hospice I also saw the very best medicine had to offer. Medicine is not always about curing, but it's always about caring. Hospice work will help you realize that even as a lowly pre-medical student (or medical student now in my case) you can offer the patient something more powerful than any medicine or surgery.

Now that I'm in my clinical years (and my internal medicine rotation in particular, where the average age is 80 and end of life issues are common), I can say with conviction that my hospice work was excellent preparation for medical school and beyond.

That's not what I am implying at all. I was trying to point out that it shows the side of medicine that many premeds never see or think of- that we can't do everything for everyone and that there is more to medicine than a cure (as you pointed out). I work very closely with hospice nurses and it is a very important and difficult job, probably the hardest job in all of medicine.

I was pointing out that it will probably help to weed out a lot of the people who are only in it for the money or supposed glory.

 

[FutureMD129]

I'm a premed and I've been wondering about hospice volunteering. I would think that hospice experience would look good on a med school app because docs need to death/end of life issues are important topics in medicine. Glad to hear that hospice volunteering has been excellent clinical experience.