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Carol Woods Residents Partner with UNC Students

Carol Woods’ mission as a not-for-profit continuing care retirement community extends beyond its 450 residents to improving housing and services for older adults in the surrounding community. Additionally, Carol Woods is committed to training the next generation of health professionals to work with older adults. During the past year and a half, Carol Woods’ residents have pursued these goals through a partnership with UNC Mobile Student Health Action Coalition (UNC MSHAC) and Project Compassion.

The UNC MSHAC program typically serves older adults in the community who have complex medical and social needs and who are often isolated from family and friends.  . Participants in the program receive monthly home visits by teams of volunteer graduate students from seven healthcare disciplines: medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, public health and social work.
 
Carol Woods’ partnership with MSHAC began when Cherie Rosemond, a Carol Woods Board member who is also the program advisor to MSHAC, asked the resident Community Relations Committee for help meeting some practical needs for an MSHAC patient.

“We were working with some people in the community who were located in close proximity to Carol Woods and needed more help than we could give. We thought maybe Carol Woods’ residents would be open to an outreach opportunity” Rosemond said.

The Community Relations Committee seized the opportunity to become more involved in the lives of the students and seniors being served through MSHAC.

In fall 2006, Project Compassion facilitated the formation of four distinct volunteer teams, comprised of 40 Carol Woods residents, to partner with MSHAC. One team serves as preceptors for 16 MSHAC teams, helping students process their experiences and providing insight from their personal experiences in aging. Another team focuses on hospitality, welcoming students to Carol Woods and taking them to their preceptor meeting rooms. A third team is directly involved with MSHAC participants as “Phone Friends,” making telephone visits to the participants who students have identified as desiring that sort of socializing. The final team provides light carpentry to improve the safety of participants’ homes.

“I think it has been a win-win situation in the sense that the residents feel like they are helping an elderly person in the community, and they also get to have interaction with graduate students,” said Dottie Heninger, co-chair of the Carol Woods resident Community Relations Committee.

Just as Rosemond hoped, involving Carol Woods residents has also provided more resources to meet the needs or the people being served. “After her precepting session, one student said, ‘I couldn't believe it when a Carol Woods resident went to her cottage and brought back one of her puzzles for our senior,’” Rosemond said.

Carol Woods resident Lew Woodham was also pleased with how open the students were to working with his group of home repair volunteers. Rather than just passing on referrals, the students pitched in to assist with home repairs.

“What was really very fortunate was that each team that made referrals was willing to extend themselves and be involved in fixing the problem,” Woodham said. “It’s not just a workman arriving, but it’s a team that has brought in another skill to meet the needs of an individual.”

Woodham and the carpentry volunteers worked with students to install a handheld shower and safety bars, repair flooring, refinish a deck and do other small home repair tasks that improved the safety and livability of participants’ homes. Often, Woodham said, they would arrive to work on one task and end up helping with a variety of other projects, like setting up a phone to ring louder or working on the air conditioning system.

“It is typical to go to a situation to deal with one problem and while there, get the ‘honey do’ list,” Woodham said with a laugh.

Whether helping meet practical needs or mentoring the students in the program, Carol Woods’ residents have provided a depth of resources to MSHAC that did not exist in the four years before the partnership was formed.

For Ken Reeb, the decision to join the preceptor team was a no-brainer. Reeb had worked as a physician at UNC for several years and was a preceptor for the Student Health Action Coalition (SHAC)—the parent organization of MSHAC—during his career.

“I have known about SHAC for many years and think it is a wonderful project.” Reeb said. Reeb has been devoted to an interdisciplinary approach to medicine for several decades, and stressed that this is one of the important benefits of the MSHAC program.

“I have been very impressed with the commitment of the students to the patients and to the people from the other disciplines who they are working with,” he said.

Woodham noticed a change in the students he mentored from one semester to another. “What I saw happening was, in the fall they were talking about a case, and in the spring they were talking about a person, a family,” Woodham said.

Reeb agreed, “I had a similar experience. The second time we met I was impressed that students very much saw the strengths of the patient as opposed to the weaknesses.”

This is just the type of experience MSHAC is designed to foster.

“Again this year, as we’ve seen in years past, the social connection that was made between the students and the seniors they served was key,” Rosemond said.

As students build relationships with their teammates, they begin to see the value of treatment approaches outside their discipline. “I talked with a medical student yesterday who said, ‘this interdisciplinary approach is the way to go,’” Rosemond said.

In addition to the countless hours residents volunteer with MSHAC, Carol Woods has also demonstrated its commitment to the program through a $10,000 grant and by donating meeting space and refreshments throughout the year.

“It has really been wonderful to have a nice place to meet and have people who greet us and make sure we are comfortable,” Rosemond said.

Working together, MSHAC and Carol Woods are improving the quality of life for older adults in the community while helping students gain a passion for aging services.