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Unfortunately, my advisor isn't the most propitious person to ask, I would rather seek answers from professional nurses who have more extensive experience with dying patients than the writer of the essay I need to read. Judging from my discretion coming from rudimentary experience as a premed, I think nursing professional in general requires greater need for compassion, empathy, and attachment to their patients. My position as a volunteer, I am aware that my general duty include offering a variety of services depending on patients' need, providing company or practical helps such as transportation. But what I want to discuss here is "Providing Company." How should I effectively bring emotional healing or at least relief? My presence could be already helping, but I certainly want to do more. One thing I am aware that I must choose my words carefully and should never be a counselor.

(I am posting the same thread, because I wasn't able to get answers and tried to delete my previous one, but I am unable to do so. Sorry....) Hello, I am a pre-medical student, who is writing a secondary personal statement for one of med schools.. They made us to read two essays written by third year students rotating, interns, or residents, and these essays are about their interaction with dying patients. They want me to write about what I learned by choosing one of these two essay. Essay 1 writer thinks that the process of death is like an invisible tidal wave, which can take her patient's life abrutly and stealthily. Essay 2 writer described her interaction with a dying patient, who was old enough to be her father, and wrote about her being compassionate and being emotionally invested to him. She was very emotional, cried and prayed with him and his family members, and insisted that she felt privileged to be a doctor caring for her patients. I chose essay 2, because I could relate to my experience with a terminally ill patient whom I encountered at haven hospice, a palliative care center. I met a patient in her seventies and initially enjoyed conversation with her as she talked about her 50 years of life in my hometown and proud achievements like sending her 3 of 5 children to college. Then her joyful voice soon faded as she started to talk about not getting colonoscopy regularly. I didn't know how to provide solace cause terminally ill patients, they are very different than other patients. During my 7 years of volunteering, I interacted with patients in dialysis, surgical center, ER, ER minor care, and OR, pediatric patients, and even homeless patients, I can give them encouraging comments, can be compassionate and empathetic to them, and reveal my willingness to help and etc. However, knowing that their conditions cannot be ameliorated, I was occupied with ambiguity and uncertainty on how to treat terminally-ill patients. To the patient in her 70s, if I expressed my compassion and empathized with her then I could only augment her sadness. On the other side, if I was optimistic and said positive things to her then my attitude could be deemed to be insensitive and uncaring. so All I could do was to hide my emotion and pretended that I was paying attention to her words while trying to come up with an answer to my uncertainty. In essay 2, the author cries with her dying patient and families. My initial impression was that she could be compromising her professionalism by being emotionally invested to her patient and should stay aloof to not to sacrifice her clinical reasoning. The dying patient simultaneously treated her as a member of his medical team and as an one of his children and felt a need to protect her. (what a role change here!!) But since the essay prompt was about "What I learned" and a popular book "On Call" written by a compassionate internist did the same thing, I think that I must be openly compassionate and emotionally invested to terminally ill patients. But am I right? If I am right, my essay is going to start with this terminally ill patient I described above and the uncertainty and ambiguity I encountered. Then I write about how this essay solved my uncertainty and how I am going to change myself as a volunteer. Does this sound good? Addendum: My position as a volunteer, I am aware that my general duty include offering a variety of services depending on patients' need, providing company or practical helps such as transportation. But what I want to discuss here is "Providing Company." How should I effectively bring emotional healing or at least relief? My presence could be already helping, but I certainly want to do more. I am also aware that I must choose my words carefully and should never be a counselor.

what! Are you saying that there are videos are this forum? If there are then I would definitely use them as vital sources!

I did contact Florida Health Dept, and they were saying that I could just pass the exam and get CNA certification, and I also have met someone, who works at Hospice care center after taking an online course and finish it in 1 week. So in FL, things are pretty lenient. :) I did volunteering at several hospitals for 500+ hours. I took intakes, bp, pulse, diabetes test, and etc w/o training at homeless clinic too and volunteered there for 3 years.

oh sorry, I forgot to mention an important point! I am in Florida, so I can just take the test as a challenger, so the eligibility is out of concern. I was just worried because prep programs are at least 7 days long and cost $400, and other prep books were 300~800 pages long while mine is only 122 pgs.

Hello, I am trying to work as a CNA over this gap year and realized that prep program costs almost $1,000, which is too expensive for me. So I purchased this book from Amazon and was wondering whether this book and watching clinical videos in youtube could prepare me well to pass both written and clinical exams.. Here is the link. http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Nurs...5175948&sr=8-1 This book has 122 pages long content review and has a list of words in each chapter, and there are 30 words per list. There are 5 chapters for the written test, 1 chapter for the clinical, and (1) Intro (2) roles and responsibilities (3) promotion of health and safety (4) promotion of function and health of residents (5) Specialized care (6) Clinical Skills Performance Checklist (I would add youtube videos while memorizing these checklists) Would it be possible to just study this book and youtube videos and pass both written and clinical exams?