Teaching dementia care to physical therapy doctoral students: A multimodal experiential learning approach.

As the population aged 65 and older grows, it becomes imperative for health care providers to expand their knowledge regarding geriatric conditions and concerns. Dementia is a devastating degenerative disease process that is affecting millions of individuals in the United States, with significant economic and emotional burden on family and caregivers. The need for further dementia education in physical therapy school is essential to improve attitudes and treatment that affect patient outcomes and quality of care. This physical therapy program implemented a 12-hour multimodal experiential learning module designed to educate their students on the challenges associated with dementia to increase knowledge and confidence when treating these patients. The results of this study showed statistically significant improvements in overall confidence and knowledge of treating patients with dementia. The study finds the addition of experiential learning to traditional didactic coursework improves students' reported confidence in working with patients with dementia and understanding the challenges associated with treating patients with dementia.

Power of Peer-Assisted Learning: An Interdisciplinary Mobility Laboratory Experience.

BACKGROUND: The benefits of early patient mobility in the hospital environment has been well established. This article highlights an interactive peer-assisted learning (PAL) mobility laboratory. Physical therapy (PT) students taught patient mobility skills to nursing students, with the goal of enhancing mobility knowledge and improved understanding of the two disciplines' roles and responsibilities. METHOD: The students were divided into 10 groups, with six nursing and three PT students in each group; each group rotated through the 10 mobility stations every 20 minutes. After completing all stations, the nursing students reviewed a case scenario requiring application of the recently learned knowledge and skills. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that the nursing students demonstrated significant improvement in overall knowledge of safe patient mobility, as well as improved confidence in the instruction of safe patient mobility. CONCLUSION: Both groups reported that the PAL strategy was successful in achieving the intended goals of improved interprofessional understanding.

Changes in blood glucose and salivary cortisol are not necessary for arousal to enhance memory in young or older adults.

Emotional arousal enhances memory, and this memory-enhancing effect may involve neurochemicals released by arousal, such as glucose and cortisol. Physiological consequences of arousal change with age, and these changes may contribute to age-related memory decline. The present study examined whether emotionally arousing pictures would affect glucose and cortisol levels and enhance memory in young and older adults. Blood glucose and salivary cortisol were measured once before and six times after young and old adults viewed either 60 highly arousing or 60 relatively neutral pictures. Recall for the stimuli was measured 75 min later. The results indicated that recall was impaired in older adults. Arousal as measured by self-report enhanced recall in both young and older adults. However, arousal did not affect glucose or cortisol levels in either group. These findings demonstrate that changes in blood glucose or salivary cortisol levels are not necessary for arousal to enhance memory.