Greta Nerad
Staff Writer
Mira Costa Senior Layla Tondravi spent her summer caring for senior citizens with dementia as part of an internship with UCLA in order to gain work experience in the medical field.
Tondravi worked in two programs: Memory Care, which works on teaching memory training techniques to elderly people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and Finger Scholars, which is for adults over the age of fifty who want to take classes at UCLA. Tondravi’s program had mostly undergrad college student participants; she was one of only two high schoolers who engaged in the internship said Tondravi.
“It was a bit intimidating to be around so many older people, having to wear professional attire every day,” Tondravi said. “But I learned a lot about internships in general and how to talk to older, more experienced people in the field.”
It was a very long application process in which you have to do medical testing, receive shots, and take courses on lab safety, according to Tondravi. The interns also take the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability compliance, or HIPAA, which protects patients’ privacy and medical information confidentiality.
“Layla was always interested in an internship that blends psychology with chemistry,” Layla’s mother Moji Tondravi said. “Her uncle who is a professor at UCLA told her about this internship and she applied for it.”
Tondravi would like to pursue the medical field when she is older and she aspires to be a psychiatrist. This was a good way to test the field of psychology and geriatrics, according to Tondravi.
“I believe [Layla] will be great if she decides to pursue an occupation in a medical field,” Tondravi’s boyfriend Mira Costa senior Xander Wee said. “She’s very kind and patient so I know she’ll be amazing involving anything working with people who need her help.”
The interns had meetings before and after every memory care session where they learned about the actual brain, specifically the frontal and temporal lobes which affect memory and the onset of dementia. In the program they don’t call the issues by their medical name so as not to scare patients who forget that they have this illness.
“The patients are very interesting because they lose their inhibitions,” Tondravi said. “You see it play out in different ways because they don’t understand their issues and will forget what happened five minutes later, so it’s interesting seeing how patients’ personalities show through.”
The seniors who participated in the Memory Care program primarily come in a spouse duo, one spouse has the memory problem and the other helps them. Tondravi worked with the couples as well as other interns to teach participants practical techniques. These techniques include mind-body connections to enhance memory, social skills, creativity and overall brain stimulation.
“I learned a lot about internships in general and how to talk to older, more experienced people in the field,” Tondravi said. “It was interesting to get to assist real people with real problems.”
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