Service Learning Reflection

I am very grateful taking gerontology 425/525. I learned not only class materials; I also gain more experiences doing service learning. I did my service learning at St. Benedict’s Senior Community. Its amazing experiences I had ever have and I am very happy to get to work with elderly people. In addition, I would like to talk about what I learn during service learning hours, how class materials helped me work with dementia residents, and what challenges I faced during volunteer hours. I learned many things during service learning. I learned that dementia is not just a disease, but it’s a process. I got a chance to build close relationships with staffs, residents, and volunteer friends. I learned that dementia residents are just like human being. The degeneration of their brain makes them behave different than us. I learned many symptoms while working with dementia residents such as forgetfulness, disorientation, tremor, …show more content…
I found a few people have tremor and problem with balancing themselves or slow movement. One of them also hallucinates. I assume it can be either Lewy body or Parkison’s dementia. Based on the Alzheimer Disease and Other Dementias textbook chapter 6 “Dementia with Lewy Bodies”, reading # 18 and 17, and lecture power point on “Lewy Body and Parkinsons-Post,” the symptoms of Lewy body are muscle stiffness, problem with balancing, and hallucination. Tremor is less likely common in Lewy Body. The symptoms of Parkison’s dementia are tremors, and forgetfulness. One of the resident also lose social screen and have no idea what going on around her. These symptoms can be frontotemporal dementia. Reading number 19, and FTD-Post 9/30/15 power point also displayed that the symptoms of FTD are loss or social screen, problem with language, in appropriate behavior, or change in emotions, and increase in sex. I won’t be able to differentiate types of dementia if I don’t learn this information in the