Does Hospice count as direct patient care hours!?

[Mricca1]

Hi guys! I've been a hospice volunteer for a little over a year now and am wondering if those hours count as direct patient care in CASPA. I am touching and holding and doing basic care for the people, much like I did in my CNA work. Does this count as direct patient care or does it go under volunteering hours, or both? Please help!

 

Mricca1

[whoRyou]

IMO, that is about as 'Direct' as you can get for HCE ... It takes a special person to work for people who are terminally ill. 

[Guest MedLib42]

This depends on the school(s) you're applying to. Many schools make it a policy not to accept volunteer work to fulfill the direct patient care requirement, regardless of your duties or how much "direct care" you actually provided. Some schools are fine with volunteer work as long as you're spending the majority of your time touching patients / administering care of some sort. Others will only accept it if you have some advanced hands-on duties such as injections, blood draws, wound care, histories, vitals, and so on. Whether your schools count it or not will determine where you list it in CASPA. 

 

You'll need to contact the schools you're applying to, or check their websites (some of them publish this info online). 

[primadonna22274]

Absolutely. I have a very soft spot for hospice volunteers and any clinician who does this work.

[zoopeda]

Many schools make it a policy not to accept volunteer work to fulfill the direct patient care requirement...

 

In my experience, SOME schools require payment for service.  MANY accept volunteer contact.  You could easily find a dozen schools out there to apply to--all of which would accept your HCE as credible experience.  Good luck. 

[Guest MedLib42]

In my experience, SOME schools require payment for service.  MANY accept volunteer contact.  You could easily find a dozen schools out there to apply to--all of which would accept your HCE as credible experience.  Good luck. 

 

You can easily find more than a dozen that accept volunteer experience, actually. But, out of the 104 schools that actually strictly require HCE, about 40 schools require paid experience and won't accept volunteer work. Out of another 50 that only recommend/prefer HCE, there are still a few more that only classify paid work as HCE. To me, this still constitutes a significant number of "paid HCE only" schools, but there are obviously plenty that will take volunteer work as well.

 

However, in answering the OP, the bottom line is that "paid HCE only" schools do still exist, and whether to list volunteer work as HCE depends on whether the OP is applying to any of these schools. If so, it has to be listed as volunteer and not as HCE (and if there is no other paid HCE, might want to reconsider which schools to apply to). If not applying to any paid HCE schools, then by all means, list it as HCE - I would personally think it would be considered excellent HCE :).

[ddisilvestro]

Healthcare hours is a difficult question to answer on forums like this. The best place to go is to the program directly with these questions. Every single program is different and will accept your experiences differently. What will really help them make the determination is that you clearly and concisely list your duties during your experiences on your application. That makes all the difference. When it comes to determining hours, they make no assumptions. Put on your application EXACTLY what you did during that time.