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.” |