“When I first came here, throughout that first week I was given desserts, and treats would show up on my door and cards.”
First year medical student Kaylin Burton isn’t spending the school year living in a dormitory or an apartment with friends.
She lives onsite at Holland Home's Raybrook campus in Grand Rapids, among its residents with dementia.
“People living with dementia, there can be good days and there can be bad days. In the position of a doctor's office, seeing a patient for 30 minutes, we are not seeing the full story there. So, I think this experience will really influence me to not just treat the illness but treat the person as a whole.”
Burton is the first student in the Intergenerational Living Initiative, designed to give students a unique learning experience, engaging daily with residents to deepen their understanding of dementia, and fulfill educational requirements.
Dementia Institute Director Curt Gritter notes the benefits to the residents as well.
“This kind of program helps us advance the field of dementia care. Maybe not in the medication itself, but the care, because when Kaylin is engaging with residents, we can tell that the symptoms of dementia are decreasing. So human connection and that engagement is profound.”
Fourth-year medical student Chris Skovira is on the board that helped develop the program that partners MSU College of Human Medicine with the Dementia Institute and Holland Home.
She hopes will establish a national model for education and care.
“There's just been a lot of magic around feeling so much resonance in that mission of reducing isolation by truly becoming parts of the community while we're learning what's going to shape us as future physicians.”
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