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A Dose of Patients' Lives: Medical Students Wear Glasses, Gloves, Weights to Simulate Common Ailments of Older Adults

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 April 2006, 09:01 CDT

By Katherine Spitz, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

Apr. 12--For an hour on Tuesday, 21-year-old medical student Hannah Conley developed cataracts, dragged a foot as if she had suffered a stroke and lost her sharp hearing.

The second-year medical student at Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown was taking part in an exercise to teach students empathy for older adults' health problems.

"I thought it was wonderful," said Conley, who doesn't have relatives with major health problems. "This was a good reminder of why we are all here -- instead of sitting all day studying."

The experience was part of the students' regular physical diagnosis lab at Akron General Medical Center, which this month is focusing on geriatrics.

For the first part of the morning, students listened intently to older adults as they talked about aging issues, including the importance of having a good patient-doctor relationship.

"Listen to your patients," advised 79-year-old Helen Choate, of Tallmadge. "That's the big thing. If you don't listen, I'm outta here."

After the discussion, students paired up and received scenarios describing different tasks they needed to do. But before they could do their jobs, they had to simulate impairments related to aging.

Blurred vision was created by smearing Vaseline on sunglasses, or by donning dark glasses. Thin rubber gloves dampened finger sensation, enabling students to get a sense of what seniors who have peripheral vascular disease or diabetes experience. To simulate a stroke's effects, some students attached weights to their shoes.

After putting on dark glasses, rubber gloves, a sling and cotton in her ears, 26-year-old Shivonne Suttles took an elevator to a pop machine on the hospital's second floor. She tried to count out change and stared at her hands.

"It's difficult to see," Suttles said. "If this was every day, this would be frustrating."

Back in the classroom, Suttles tried her second task: to get her medication into a pill-reminder container. She told her partner, medical student Malini Anand, that she wanted to count out the M&M "pills" herself. But when she tried to read the prescription label, she was stumped.

"Take one day at... I can't make it out," she told Anand, who played her caregiver.

It was important for students to also play the role of caregiver so they could understand what it feels like to be a spouse or adult child of an older person with health problems, said Deborah Plate, a family medicine physician at Akron General and a NEUCOM faculty member.

Plate, guest speaker for the geriatrics lab, said it is crucial for medical students to understand the older adult, particularly if they are going into family medicine and will treat a large number of older patients.

"We know (seniors) are going to be a fifth of the population by 2020," Plate said. "... This is who you are going to see."

Katherine Spitz can be reached at 330-996-3581 or kspitz@thebeaconjournal.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio)

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