Today was a very busy day, as we attended a lecture about the Argentinian healthcare industry, visited both public and privately-funded community primary health centers, and ended with a visit to Good Samaritan Hospice Center.

The visit to Good Samaritan was a difficult one since it cared for such a sensitive patient population. However, I was moved by the enormous sense compassion and humanity displayed there. Good Samaritan is a place where patients, or “guests” are invited to live until they pass, and it truly is a home, no matter how long the patients stay there. Patients were treated as friends and family and efforts were made to cure both the body and soul, taking into consideration the pain aside from physical ailments that the healthcare industry so often forgets about. Everything at the hospice center comes from donations and staff all volunteer their time, so true empathy is the driving force of the operation, not profit. In my last year as a nursing student discussing issues in healthcare access and disparities, as well as through learning about disparities based on ability to pay here in Argentina, I had started to lose faith in the healthcare system and its ability to truly work for the common good. However, I was so struck by the humanity of this organization that I started to regain some faith in the industry and the notion that healthcare is based on empathy, not just turning a profit. Good Samaritan brings humanity to end-of-life care by making patients feel cared for, comfortable, and supported. In hospitals, patients are sometimes either given false hope for a cure or are disregarded when it’s determined there’s nothing else that can be done to help them. However, Good Samaritan fills that void and adopts the philosophy that there is always something more to be done, whether its reconnecting with estranged family or spending any remaining time with loved ones. Good Samaritan promotes the idea that palliative care should represent a culmination of life, not the end of it, and that one’s journey should be celebrated and honored.

This visit also altered my perceptions about the role of a nurse, and the role that I will eventually play in a patient’s life in the future as a nurse. In Good Samaritan, nurses were not performing complicated procedures or incessantly charting. Rather, they helped with tasks like bathing patients, giving treatments to increase comfort and reduce pain, and interacting with the guests, all measures used to give patients the dignity and peace they deserve during their time at the hospice center. In my courses this past year, I learned that a nurse is responsible for caring for the whole patient: mind, body, and soul, and I got to see that in action today. The nurses at Good Samaritan truly worked from a place of compassion, and it reminded me of the basis of the nursing profession and showed me that nursing is so much more than just passing meds and caring for bed sores. In the past year at school, I have been so caught up with memorizing the bones and muscles and trying to understand how the nephron works that I think I forgot that you cannot provide truly patient-centered care with just knowledge alone. Good nursing comes from both competency and caring, and the staff at Good Samaritan exemplified that in every aspect of their work.