In the latest issue of “CATALYST,” read how students learn to deliver person-centered care, guided by the “4Ms” Age-Friendly Care framework: what matters, medications, mentation, and mobility.
Photo: Nursing students worked with residents at Keswick Multi-Care Center in Baltimore to create “What Matters” boards — art projects that share life stories and personal preferences.
At Keswick Multi-Care Center in Baltimore, residents recently worked alongside University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) students to create “What Matters” boards — art projects that share their life stories and personal preferences. For the students, the experience offered far more than creative engagement. It also became a powerful lesson in what it truly means to care for older adults.
As UMSON student Roxanne Simon explained: “I began to understand that honoring small choices, like when someone wants to eat or how they prefer to spend their afternoon, can make a profound difference in their quality of life. These experiences have deeply influenced how I view older adults and have left a lasting mark on my career aspirations.”
That experience grew out of a unique practicum designed to immerse final-semester Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students in the real-world environment of post-acute and long-term care at Keswick. There, students learn to deliver person-centered care, guided by the “4Ms” Age-Friendly Care framework: what matters, medications, mentation, and mobility. The practicum is the result of a partnership among UMSON, the Johns Hopkins Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP), and Keswick and is led by Melissa McClean, MSN, CRNP, ANP-BC, ACHPN, CNE, a clinical instructor at UMSON.
For McClean, guiding students into the long-term care environment is a natural extension of her own career in hospice and palliative care. Having navigated the complexities of working in these settings herself, she understands how difficult it can be for new nurses to find their way. “We’re planting seeds,” she said. “The pathway to working in these kinds of care facilities is not always easy to navigate. So the partnership with GWEP and Keswick is a really exciting opportunity.”
Each semester, students who take part in the practicum spend two days at Keswick connecting directly with residents, practicing communications skills, and applying age-friendly principles in real-world settings.
McClean noted that many students who take part in the practicum leave with a deeper appreciation for the slower, more relationship-based pace of long-term care. “They learn communications skills they might not otherwise get, and students realize that those skills — communicating with older adults and advocating for their needs — can translate to other areas of their life, both professionally and personally.”
Read more about the practicum here.
The latest issue of "CATALYST" magazine highlights the School of Pharmacy's Mass Spectrometry Center; Police and Public Safety's comfort K9 Poe; the Costa Rica Faculty Development Institute; Bill Joyner, JD, MSW, of the Office of Community and Civic Engagement; the School of Social Work's B'more for Healthy Babies; the School of Medicine's work to develop physicians for rural areas; facts about the Universities at Shady Grove, and much more.