The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) social work program, in collaboration with the UAB Geriatric Education Center, will implement the Fair Haven Retirement Community Project: Interdisciplinary Team Training Senior Mentor program. Social work students enrolled in Human Behavior and the Social Environment II will participate in the gero experiential activity for a percentage of their grade in the course. Students will work in multidisciplinary teams that include trainees from other disciplines such as medicine, nursing and occupational therapy to interview the older adults and develop a care plan. The UAB Center on Aging Team, along with the social work students, will evaluate the activity to determine if modifications need to be made and re-evaluate after year two. Through the project, students will:
- learn and apply theories of human behavior that help them to understand an older adult’s life situations/reactions
- interview an older adult in a Retirement Community as a part of an interdisciplinary healthcare team;
- attend an interdisciplinary team meeting during which they meet with faculty and participants from other disciplines that interacted with the same older adult to obtain a multidisciplinary perspective on assessment and develop a care plan; and
- complete a narrative paper regarding their experience.