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Why did you decide to work in palliative care?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was in my last year of med school, I thought that I wanted to be an oncologist.\u00a0 I opted to do an elective in palliative care because I thought that knowing about that side of things would definitely be important for my future career.\u00a0 During my time with the PC team, it was obvious that there was something very different about the work that we did and the people who did the work.\u00a0 Everyone was an important part of the team, everyone\u2019s input was valued, and we actually thought about the people we were caring for as people.\u00a0 Like real people.\u00a0 And everyone on the team treated each other like real people, too.\u00a0 It\u2019s disappointing to need to point out how different that was from anything else I\u2019d seen in medicine, but it\u2019s true!<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t think much about pursuing PC as a career at that time because I thought it was sad that just about everyone we saw was really sick and not going to get better.\u00a0 Pretty early on in internal medicine residency, though, I realized that everyone I was caring for in the hospital was just as sick.\u00a0 Instead of getting to know them, what was important to them, and how medicine could help them live their lives instead of take over their lives, I was spending time checking boxes, focusing on medical problems and not what they meant to the person dealing with them.\u00a0 When I was able to work with a PC team again later in the year, it became so clear that this is what I always thought of when I used to think about being a doctor.\u00a0 Practicing palliative care was what I thought practicing medicine in general would be.\u00a0 From that point on, I knew that focusing on palliative care was what I wanted to do.\u00a0 I like to think that PC is the specialty that reminds medicine about humanity and that patients are humans with lives and loved ones and not just lists of medical problems.\u00a0 I can\u2019t think of anything more special to do.<\/p>\n What is your favorite part of your job?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think there are two main things.\u00a0 One, I get to work with an amazing team of people who all have the same sense of purpose with our role in health care, who all bring different skills and experiences to the table to help people the best we can, who want to always learn more and improve, and who want to focus on getting to know people as people and supporting them in any way that\u2019s helpful.\u00a0 Two, I have the time and support to simply sit with people, learn who they are and what\u2019s important to them, help them understand what\u2019s going on with their health, support them in making some really tough decisions, and really to just be present with them.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a privilege to be invited into people\u2019s lives when they\u2019re going through something really challenging and for them to trust that you can help.\u00a0 Again, I can\u2019t think of anything more special.<\/p>\n