MEDIA CONTACT: Elizabeth Crown at (312) 503-8928 or at e-crown@northwestern.edu

May 5, 2003

Students Are Buddies with Alzheimer’s Patients

CHICAGO --- A program that pairs first-year medical students with individuals with early to moderate-stage Alzheimer’s disease gives beginning students at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University an up-close and personal experience of the impact and challenges patients with Alzheimer’s disease and their families face every day.

“The Buddy Program enables medical students to grasp the concept and science of the disease and also allows the senior `buddy’ to teach medical students how to see the patient as a human being and not disease,” said Alzheimer’s disease authority M.-Marsel Mesulam, M.D., who created the Buddy Program.

Mesulam is Ruth and Evelyn Dunbar Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of neurology at the Feinberg School and director of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern.

Through the Buddy Program, medical students can interact with a patient outside of the confines of the doctor’s office or hospital bed, which, prior to this program might have been the student’s only encounter with persons with dementia, said Darby Morhardt, who directs the program.

Each student in the program is matched with a person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a related dementia or mild cognitive impairment without dementia. Students are required to commit at least five hours a month to the program. Four hours are devoted to spending time with their buddy and one hour to regular program meetings.

Participants are selected as senior buddies only if they can understand the basic concept of the program and their willingness to spend a certain amount of time per month with a medical student, Morhardt explained.

Activities are determined by the person with dementia, the caregiver and the student, with support provided by the center’s professional staff. Activities usually include visiting museums, enjoying hobbies together, exercising, shopping or just having a simple conversation over a meal or coffee. Students write a confidential summary following each visit.

The medical students also are permitted to observe clinical evaluations of their buddy and their families at the Neurobehavior and Memory Health Service, the clinical arm of the center, which permits students to observe neurological, neuropsychological, social work and/or psychiatric assessments.

Many of the student buddies have remained in close contact with their senior buddies after the school year, Morhardt said, and even have been invited to or have invited their buddy to family functions. Students seem genuinely transformed by their experiences with their senior buddy.

One student said about the program: “I think that as doctors, it may be easy to have the disease state overshadow everything else – and forget the reality of a disease as it affects the patient’s life and the lives of their loved ones. I truly believe that a program like this has enabled me to see the other side of the diagnosis and will only enhance my ability to practice later on.”