Taureef Mohammed

LAST WEEK, during interviews of prospective geriatric medicine residents, grandparents came up often. It was not unexpected. 'If you look at what inspired many geriatricians to go into geriatric medicine,' a geriatrician once told me, 'you'll find a grandparent.'

Perhaps the same could be said of many doctors. For many of us, our first impressions of illness and medicine had been formed by a white-haired relative, way before we started watching medical TV dramas about young doctors saving young patients. (With time, we eventually learned that our first impressions were more accurate.)

The first sick people we knew were our grandparents; our first experience with dying and death was losing a grandparent; the first family consult we got during medical school was probably about a grandparent. In one online medical school forum, some users advised medical school applicants to ditch the overused grandparent story.

So, we developed, through medicine, special connections with our grandparents. And perhaps those connections were special not only because they were our grandparents, but also because they were two generations apart - they had grown up in a vastly different world and, consequently, had a very different view of our world.

In our polarised, algorithm-driven world - a world of trends, similar interests, and plenty of sameness - such connections were precious. And for younger people, pursuing everything under the sun, none other than their overly zealous parents cheering them on, a connection with an imperturbable older person helped to keep it real.

A few months ago, during a placement at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener-Waterloo, I chatted with Pearl Ifeadi, an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo. An aspiring doctor, she was pursuing a degree in biomedical science and physiology with the hope of applying to medical school in the future.

She was a volunteer in the Hospital Elder Life Program, a volunteer-driven, globally-recognised initiative that has been shown to improve outcomes for older hospitalised patients. Volunteers engaged older patients through conversation and other cognitively-stimulating activities. As I was about to leave the hospital, I met her preparing for an evening shift.

'I like the evening shift, coming to the hospital after school or work - it's like I am leaving the material world outside and getting a chance to focus on what's really important,' she said.

'You put the studying aside and learn things like gratitude. Patients are always very grateful - all they seem to want is people around to talk to.'

Empathy, she added, was another lesson she had picked up during her time as a volunteer in the hospital. 'We are all human, but an older person's reaction may be different to another person's. So, you have to learn to put yourself in their shoes.'

Pearl seemed to be following a similar path to Dr Sheri-Lynn Kane, chair of geriatric medicine at Western University, and a University of Waterloo alumna. I asked her about her inspi