This is another class I took during the winter intersession of my Junior year. It is here that we learned about the history of geriatric care and how the government has treated differing populations. Throughout the course of this class, we learned a great deal about government programs to assist in elderly/disabled care, the history of geriatric care, the future of geriatric care, but most importantly how to care for the end of life.
While the students were responsible for learning the government policies and laws assisting the disabled or elderly, what I found most interesting was that the class also centered around end of life care. During this course the students were responsible for reading and taking notes on a book called “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.” This book was based on real events, depicting the journey of doctor navigating end of life care of his patients and his father.
Fascinatingly, end of life care does not solely encompass comfort care, pain management, or even illness management. It is holistically caring for the patient’s religious, personal, familial, and mental needs as well. This class allowed the students to explore what patients often preferred their deaths to play out. Painless, quickly, in a place of comfort, family surrounding them, family not in the room, physician assisted suicide, or natural death, the students were exposed to all of these dying preferences within the course book being read.
This course very quickly changed my own personal views on death and the dying process. As a student learning how to be a nurse I thought it was our sworn duty to prevent death and promote life as much as physically possible. But end of life care is entirely different. Here, the nurse is focused on death with dignity and respect. Many more open conversations about dying, family preparations, disease management, and especially how the patient and family are emotionally feeling are encouraged. Religious practices, personal beliefs, family considerations, medical intervention tolerances are all points of topic when discussing how individuals would like to choose how they die. Within the book, the main character describes how he has taken care of many patients who have chosen to have their family in the room when they die, wait until family has left the room to die, want to die in the comfort of their own home, would like religious figures to ease them into death, and even some who request physician assisted suicide.
Understanding and recognizing that there is no universal correct way to die is a fundamental truth that must be accepted by all patients in order for them to open up about their feelings and comply with their care. Doctors, nurses, care aids, nutritionists, social workers, and many more professionals are incorporated into these conversations about the dying process and how they patient chooses to die. This course was incredibly vital for my understanding of end of life care and the management of the elderly population. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to have taken this class, and have many of my horizons widened in the process.