This
unique program links students one-on-one, with community-residing
senior volunteers. Each student engages in a highly personal
and mutually helpful relationship with a well senior in
regular activities through the semester. This ongoing
relationship provides an excellent opportunity for the
student's learning and appreciation of normal aging and
its effect on health and functioning.
Students
record their interviews and evaluate their communication
techniques through process recordings. This methodology
gives them a chance to examine, express and reflect on
their feelings and attitudes about these healthy, homebound
senior citizens. Their process recordings, when compared
to fellow students' process recordings of hospitalized
senior patients, demonstrate more learning of senior wellness
and of aging in general. Furthermore, students repeatedly
report surprise and delight with the vitality and involvement
they observe among the elderly.
The
Senior Mentor Project gives structure for achievement
of the AACN/Hartford Recommended Competencies for Geriatric
Nursing Care. Students learn tremendously from older adults
who are not dependent. Their fears about aging are virtually
erased. They learn to respect and treat older adults as
individuals. They also gain valuable insight from their
senior mentors about the important nurse role in both
preventative and restorative care. The imperative to prepare
nurse generalists with gerontological essential competencies
resonates throughout this project as students learn from
their mentors' life experiences.
