Volunteering with Word on the Wards was definitely a rewarding experience and a great opportunity for me to experience a different type of patient counseling. In my internships at pharmacies, I have mostly counseled patients on how to use their medications or interviewed patients about their medications. However, I was able to experience a different type of counseling here. Some of the conversations I had while I was volunteering were short and basic, such as checking to see how a patient was feeling about their hospital stay at that time and being sympathetic to the worries that they had about their health. Other conversations were more difficult and involved more sensitive topics about their health.
One such topic that I had encountered while volunteering was about substance use disorder. Substance use disorder was a difficult topic for me to talk about with a patient because of the great stigma that is associated with it. When talking to patients about their substance use disorder, I had a very hard time probing for more details about their use. In many of the conversations, I would be able to scratch the surface of the substance use disorder, such as asking them about things such as what substances they had tried in the past, and how frequently they use it. I had a very difficult time asking any more questions about their use for fear of upsetting the patient. One thing I had wished I had done was to push it just a little bit further to try and dig deeper, but at the time I felt that I was not ready to push for more details. Despite that, many of the conversations I have had with patients were relatively pleasant. This experience has furthered my understanding of the state of mind a patient is in when they are at the hospital.
Until I volunteered for this program and reflected on this, I did not appreciate the fact that patients have lives outside of the hospital. During my internships where I performed medication reconciliations for patients, my mindset was more of: Mr J, past medical history of HTN, HLD, CAD on blood pressure and cholesterol medications. My thought process of patients was more that they were people with lists of conditions and medications. This experience has allowed me to take a step back and appreciate that these people have problems not only in the hospital, but in their lives outside as well and I will now make it a point to understand that patients have to put their lives on hold because of an illness they are dealing with. And I feel that is not something I should be taking lightly with when I am a practicing health professional. So overall, despite some regrets I had about how I approached this volunteering position, I had a very good time volunteering with Word on the Wards and I have learned something valuable and it is something I will take with me to my future practice.