Volunteers in partnership: An Alzheimer's rehabilitation program delivered by students

Abstract

This article describes a “partnered volunteering,” student-delivered language, and memory stimulation program for Alzheimer patients that is easy to replicate and administer low in cost, and beneficial to the patients, students, family members, and participating community agencies involved. The program took place during two consecutive semesters at the University of Arizona. Positive pre- to post-test patient language changes and improvements on memory test performance are reported. Twelve early stage Alzheimer patients-six each semester-were matched with 12 undergraduate speech and hearing and psychology students. The pairs were each assigned to 10 one-hour weekly sessions of volunteer service or other community activity meaningful to the patient. During each session, students engaged partners in 30 to 40 minutes of structured conversation-stimulating activities. During the second semester, four patients also worked with biographical memory tapes and quizzes produced and administered by their student partners.^1-2 Parallel discourse samples were taken of subjects before and after participation. Small to massive gains in number of substantive on-topic statements produced were achieved by seven out of 11 subjects who completed the program: 9 percent, 14 percent, 48 percent, 58 percent, 93 percent, 161 percent, and 238 percent over baseline, respectively. Eight subjects improved on picture description and eight on proverb interpretation tasks. Three of the four patients who worked with biographical memory tapes substantially improved performance from pre- to post-training. All participants-patients, students, and caregivers-benefited effectively and socially.