Med Students Trade Places With Elderly Patients
Soo Chung Kim is just starting the ride of her life, reports CBS News national correspondent Jim Axelrod.
"I've never been on stretcher," Soo Chung tells a nurse.
This 4th year medical student is spending the next week and a half living among 514 residents at the Jewish Home for the Aged in Upper Manhattan. Not as a doctor, but as - a patient.
"Today just being even in this bed, I'm not comfortable," said Soo Chung. "Although I'm just laying down."
Comfort is not the goal of this program, called "Learning by Living." Medical students considering a specialty in geriatrics live life at the other end of the stethoscope. Marilyn Gugliucci started the program five years ago.
"It's about being in the shoes, in the wheelchair, living the live over an extended period of time, that's the key," said Marilyn.
The students are assigned a diagnosis. Soo Chung is supposed to be a recent stroke victim.
"It seems to have affected only your write side primarily," said a doctor.
"It's taking a lot of adjusting too. Not walking around," said Soo Chung. "Everything's different."
Throughout 10 days and nights she was poked and prodded, fed pureed food and re-taught the basics, like how to dress. She even learned to knit one-handed. Each night she recorded her impressions in writing for school and on video for CBS News.
"It can be a very lonely place," Soo Chung said in one video.
"That's exactly the kind of empathy this exercise can foster," said geriatrician Veronica LoFaso.
"Without connection, you're not a good doctor," said Veronica.
Geriatrics is a field that could use a few good doctors. Five years ago, there was one geriatrician per 5,000 people 65 and over in this country. Twenty years from now, that ratio is expected to be 1 in 8,000. That's in part because geriatrics is among the lowest-paid specialties.
"You can start out as an orthopedist making $250,000; why would you want to cut that significantly?" asked Veronica. "A lot of people find that just undoable."
On the day of her departure, it was clear this critical part of Soo Chung's medical training had given her much more to think about than making money.
"I never realized how vulnerable being on the other side was," said Soo Chung. "And I hope when I go back as a medical student and hopefully a doctor, soon that I remember how it feels to be the patient."
A lesson she could have only learned in a one-of-a-kind classroom.
