Retired physician teaching about Alzheimer's -- his own - Chicago Tribune

Dr. Daniel Winship and Jared Worthington wandered through the stacks at the Pritzker Military Library, pausing whenever curiosity called.

"'Memoirs of an Army Surgeon – 1948,'" Worthington read from a book he pulled from the shelf. "Can you imagine?"

Their interest in medicine is mutual. Worthington, 25, is a first-year medical student at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Winship, 80, is a retired physician with a particular interest in medical education, including a stint as dean of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine .

Now Winship has returned to that field, but in a way he never could have predicted.

He is teaching a medical student about Alzheimer's disease — his own.

Winship and Worthington have been paired up in the Buddy Program at the Feinberg School. The program matches medical students with people who have early-stage Alzheimer's disease for a year of visits, outings and, possibly, friendship.

The purpose is twofold: to give the still-active patients an enjoyable and productive activity and to let medical students develop a deeper understanding of Alzheimer's by getting to know someone who has it.

It is crucial that they gain such insight, said Darby Morhardt, education director of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Feinberg, who created and runs the Buddy Program.

The number of people with Alzheimer's is steadily growing as the population ages and more people are in the years of prime risk of the disease. By 2025, according to the Alzheimer's Association, the number of people age 65 and older with the illness could be up by 40 percent. By 2050, the number could nearly triple, from 5 million today to a projected 13.8 million.

"It's inevitable that primary care physicians are going to be seeing people with cognitive impairments," Morhardt said.

In the Buddy Program, she said, the medical students learn how to communicate with someone who has those impairments. They also see that early-stage Alzheimer's patients can still function in many ways and lead meaningful lives.

"It changes them as doctors," she said.

It shaped how Dr. Jeffrey Craft, a St. Louis oncologist, interacts with his cancer patients who also have dementia.

When he went through the Buddy Program in 2000, he was paired with an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago who was well-traveled, well-read and understood exactly what was happening to him, Craft said. They kept in touch for three years; the man later died.

He still keeps in mind his onetime buddy's awareness of his handicaps and his fate.

"There is still an individual there," he said. "These people know there is something that's going on. They deserve respect for that."

Winship certainly knows what is happening to him. A dapper and genial man who wore a pinstriped suit to the luncheon where the medical students and mentors met, he minced no words about Alzheimer's, with which he was diagnosed in January.

"It's a devilish thing," he said.

But the chance to help guide a medical student again was a wonderful prospect for Winship, , who was secretary of the American Medical Association's Council on Medical Education when he retired in 2011.

"I've been a physician all my life," he said. "I just want to do some of the things I did as a physician — to continue teaching and enjoying the students."