Hope in the hospice: my 70-day placement experience

When I found out I was going to be in a hospice for 70 days my heart sank. I dreaded it and I cried at the prospect of having to work with constant loss. I had experienced a lot of loss as a child, and while I felt reconciled to it, I knew that this place would push all my buttons.

I went for a “pre-placement interview” (tea, biscuits and chat) and immediately had a better feeling. The building was beautiful, and I got a strange sense of vitality about the place in spite of its clinical presentation and the ominous undertones I felt. Put only mildly more at ease about the placement setting meant I had more capacity to feel terrified at the prospect of my first student-work experience.

Within days of starting, my sense of the hospice changed completely. I realised the life and positivity radiating from every corner. The hope. I worked with many people, and their families, to see them returning or remaining at home — something I’d never expected — and I fell in love with the place, the people, the staff. I worked with consultants, doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, other social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, complementary therapists, and a spiritual care team. Each professional intertwined around the patient and family in a way that I had never seen before and may never see again.

There was still loss. I had been working with someone in the same cluster of rooms when I saw the new family admitted. Their child was the same age as my middle child, the same age as I had been when I suffered my most significant loss. I knew this was going to hurt, and when Christmas was brought forward and discussions in the MDT became more serious, I could tell from the tone that I wouldn’t escape this before my placement finished. On the day they died it was all I could do to stand up. I walked back to my desk before seeing someone else, sat across the room, who had been working with them. I knew they would want to know, so I somehow found the strength to walk over and tell them. The only thing that stopped me from breaking down was that they beat me to it, and we just hugged. That moment is possibly the only thing that keeps me from breaking down even now, so long after.

There was still hope. Another person I worked with had been pathologised, probed, and prodded since birth as a medical marvel. It was bittersweet to hear that I was one of the few professionals who had seen beyond the condition to the person inside. We talked about hopes and dreams, taking a trip to a car manufacturer to ignite their automotive passions. It was there where I realised the fragility of the person behind the strength of the hope and we worked together to find small goals to keep positivity alive.

I will always remember that experience, and it has made me consider working in a hospice in the future. They are not dark places of impending doom. They are full of light, love, and laughter. Encouraging living until, at the end, it is no longer possible, providing people and their families with the best ending they can.