“Don’t Treat Us Like Fragile Babies”: Mentors’ Perspectives of an Intergenerational Mentoring Program for Medical Students

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ageism in health care is a serious and complex issue which can have deleterious consequences for an older person’s health and well-being. Intergenerational mentoring programs that match medical students with non-familial, community-dwelling older adults provide an opportunity to cultivate more positive attitudes about aging. Intergenerational mentoring programs create prospects for reciprocal relationships that can enrich medical students’ learning while making meaningful contributions to how medicine is practiced with older people in the future. Mentor perspectives were explored by conducting secondary analysis of 41 older adult mentor interviews using a directed conceptual content analysis to identify the salience of generational guidance, volunteerism, and life satisfaction. In each of these categories, the most used codes were being involved, satisfying, and experience, which depict the positivity of the respondents’ engagement with the students and program. A better understanding of the benefits for such intergenerational mentoring programs may inform replication in other sectors.