Senior citizens are “professors” in a new education program through The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health.
The program, “From Aging…to Saging: The OSU Senior Partners Program,” was started a year ago and combines geriatrics and gerontology training with student and senior partner relationships.
The partnership allows students to witness the complexities of aging and learn the wisdom that accompanies growing older from their senior partners. Each first-year medical student is paired with an older adult, living independently in the community.
The senior partners, all volunteers, are called “professors” because of the critical role they play in the students’ education.
During regularly scheduled meetings, the students work with their partners to complete assignments by providing a clinical component to what they are learning in medical school.
The four-year relationships “help dispel stereotypes that suggest what, for example, a 75-year-old person is or should be,” said Dr. Bonnie Kantor, director of the office of geriatrics and gerontology in the college.
In the first year, students complete health assessments and memory analyses with their senior partners. The students and senior partners undergo an introduction to their future role of maximizing older patients’ functional abilities and health status.
“I think it is a wonderful program and something that was very badly needed,” said George Barlow, participant and retired professor of biology at Heidelberg College.
Barlow has been a participant in the program since it began. The program has given him the opportunity to sit and talk to new medical students and listen to them talk about their ups and downs.
As a professor, Barlow taught and advised many medical students and has an understanding of the students’ concerns. Barlow tries to help the students in any way he can, but he focuses on providing an understanding of why people choose retirement communities and the factors involved in these decisions.
Barlow speaks from experience and hopes to help the students get a better understanding of geriatrics and the background of those who live in a retirement community.
“Students can witness a healthy model of aging and see that disease and decline are not inevitable,” Kantor said.
Sessions in the second-year focus on medications, mental vitality, osteoporosis and fall prevention. Students also complete two assignments in a problem-based learning component, which covers end-of-life care and health economics.
“It’s my understanding that in the second year we get into more health concerns and if there is a history of problems and how these problems affect our lives,” Barlow said.
The students gain valuable knowledge about how the cost of medication, advertising campaigns, physical pain and other related topics affect all of geriatrics.
By focusing on these topics, the students can more easily apply what they are learning in the classroom to how Barlow and others are living and what they are experiencing with the changing times.
“The most important lesson I have learned is not to automatically assume that older people are less mentally capable,” said Connie Tang, a second-year medical student and participant in the program.
Tang has also learned many life lessons from her senior partner, such as, a sense of humor can help one get through anything.
Many students and partners, such as Tang and her senior partner, have extended their relationships to include social activities such as talks outside of the set times, small road trips and sharing common interests such as books, sports, and eating out.
“We don’t define how the relationships should work. Everyone’s experience will be different, and that is the point. Students learn that all older adults are different,” Kantor said.
“Our relationship is open, humorous, and sincere. My friendship with my partner has emboldened my understanding of the social, cultural, psychological context in which elderly persons live,” Tang said.
Learning from the senior partners will be useful for virtually all physicians of the 21st century due to a combination of aging baby boomers and the significant number of grandparents raising children, Kantor said.
During the four-year program, students will gain proficiencies identified by the American Geriatrics Society. The program’s launch was funded by grants from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the John A. Hartford Foundation.
