Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience, Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System, 150 South Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02130-4817, USA.
Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital, Bedford, MA, USA.
BMC Med Educ. 2022 Oct 5;22(1):707. doi: 10.1186/s12909-022-03749-1.
Increasing numbers of patients with Alzheimer's Disease and related disorders (ADRD) necessitates increasing numbers of clinicians to care for them. Educational programming related to community outreach with older adults may help inspire interest in future ADRD clinical careers, while increasing awareness of ADRD in the community and aiding recruitment of underrepresented participants into research studies.
The Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (BU ADRC) created the BU ADRC Student Ambassador Program, where medical students, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in medicine completed a curriculum during the academic year that included six educational and three outreach events, including monthly dementia-focused didactic meetings and outreach focusing on Black participant recruitment. A pre-post program survey design was implemented to assess changes in students' knowledge of and attitudes toward dementia and related disorders.
Between September 2015 and May 2020, thirty-seven students completed the program. Following program completion, students demonstrated increased knowledge of dementia and willingness to work with patients with dementia, as well as more positive attitudes toward patients and the role of empathy in physician practice. In terms of recruitment benefits, the students helped the BU ADRC reach older adults from underrepresented groups who could serve as participants in future research studies.
The BU ADRC Student Ambassador Program can serve as a model for other clinical research programs who wish to encourage students to consider a career in a specific field. In addition, this model has the potential to increase enrollment of participants to research studies. We discuss limitations of our initial efforts and directions for future work to quantify the anticipated benefits for student education and participant recruitment.
随着阿尔茨海默病及相关疾病（ADRD）患者人数的增加，需要越来越多的临床医生来照顾他们。针对老年人的社区外展相关教育项目可能有助于激发对未来 ADRD 临床职业的兴趣，同时提高社区对 ADRD 的认识，并帮助招募代表性不足的参与者参与研究。
波士顿大学阿尔茨海默病研究中心（BU ADRC）创建了 BU ADRC 学生大使计划，对有兴趣从事医学的医学生、研究生和本科生，在整个学年内完成了包括六次教育和三次外展活动的课程，其中包括每月以痴呆症为重点的教学会议和以招募黑人员工为重点的外展活动。采用前后测程序设计来评估学生对痴呆症和相关疾病的知识和态度的变化。
2015 年 9 月至 2020 年 5 月，共有 37 名学生完成了该计划。完成计划后，学生对痴呆症的知识有所增加，愿意与痴呆症患者合作，对患者和同理心在医生实践中的作用的态度也更加积极。在招募方面的好处是，学生们帮助 BU ADRC 接触到来自代表性不足群体的老年人，他们可以作为未来研究的参与者。
BU ADRC 学生大使计划可以作为其他临床研究项目的典范，鼓励学生考虑从事特定领域的职业。此外，该模型有可能增加研究参与者的招募。我们讨论了我们最初努力的局限性以及未来工作的方向，以量化对学生教育和参与者招募的预期收益。
