Program Pairs Medical Students With Alzheimer’s Patients.

NBC Nightly News reported, “Tonight we are presenting a special report on a special challenge facing upwards of 15 million American families and that’s Alzheimer’s,” an incurable disease that “an estimated 5.5 million Americans are living with” currently. NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver “visited one innovative program where medical students learn from the people who are actually living with Alzheimer’s.”

On its website, NBC News (9/4, Kernis, Carroll) reports that the Buddy Program, “created in 1998 by Darby Morhardt of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine…pairs medical students with Alzheimer’s patients, or ‘mentors.’” The program aims to help “improve medical student knowledge and familiarity with Alzheimer’s, while heightening sensitivity and empathy towards dementia patients.” This particular program “has been replicated at Boston University, Dartmouth College and Washington University and other medical schools around the country.”

Related Links:

— “Alzheimer’s patients mentor med students in buddy program, “Jay Kernis, NBC News, September 3, 2013.

Posted in In The News.