The Longitudinal Elderly Person Shadowing Program: Outcomes From an Interprofessional Senior Partner Mentoring Program

Abstract

The University of Saskatchewan's Longitudinal Elderly Person Shadowing (LEPS) is an interprofessional senior mentors program (SMP) where teams of undergraduate students in their first year of medicine, pharmacy, and physiotherapy; 2nd year of nutrition; 3rd year nursing; and 4th year social work partner with community-dwelling older adults. Existing literature on SMPs provides little information on the sustainability of attitudinal changes toward older adults or changes in interprofessional attitudes. LEPS students completed Polizzi's Aging Semantic Differential and the Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale. Perceptions of older men and women improved significantly and changes were sustained after one year. However, few changes were seen in interprofessional attitudes.

Keywords:

• senior mentor programs
• medical education
• ageism
• interprofessional education

Notes

1 Lower Polizzi's Modified Aging Semantic Differential Scale scores represent improved attitudes.

2 Scale anchors contained an error in 2008; however, because scale and subscale correlations were consistent for all years, data were aggregated for reported analyses.