An impassioned discussion with my residents this week led me down a rabbit hole of introspection, and I found myself revisiting times and places I have been along the way.

One thing that keeps popping up is the misperception that as a palliative care doctor, I “want” my patients to embrace hospice and to forgo CPR at the end of life. This isn’t true.

I sometimes joke with my residents that with the wealth of resources and knowledge at our fingertips, it would be easy to hand out hospice to everyone like Oprah giving away new cars. “You get hospice! And you get hospice! And you get hospice!”

But that’s not what palliative care, and certainly not what hospice, is about. I don’t “want” all of my patients to funnel into hospice, or forgo CPR.

What I want is to get to know my patients better. To be the best advocate I can, to help them make informed decisions for themselves based on their goals and values. I want to figure out how they define quality of life, learn about what gives their lives meaning. I want to help them protect what matters most in life, and in death.

Advocating for someone who is fully informed and has thought it through and wants aggressive measures at the end of life because it is who they are, because it’s interwoven into the fabric of their identity, because it’s how they want to live and die doesn’t mean I’m not doing my job as a palliative care doctor.

That is my job, as a palliative care doctor.