Making a difference: Students’ experiences with a dementia care program

As the number of elderly citizens in general and the number of persons with dementia in particular rises, the importance of educating geriatric health care professionals increases. Recruitment is, however, impaired by negative stereotypes and insecurity. Previous research has shown that contact with the field of dementia care is important for students’ motivation for choosing this career path. This paper presents an extracurricular psychomotor intervention program in which students through eight visits to elderly persons with dementia carry out an intervention involving direct individual contact. Eight psychomotor therapy students participated in follow-up focus group interviews. The purpose was to explore the motivational dynamics that make these experiences meaningful to students. Qualitative analysis of the students’ self-assessed outcomes revealed three themes: The relational encounter, Discovering the person, and Making a difference. In combination these themes show important nuances to existing literature on student career dreams by pointing to the benefits of attending to the moment to moment changes in the care situation.