Taiwanese Students Undertake Internships at an Elderly Care Nursing Home in Paris

An aging population and caring for the very elderly is a major concern that Taiwan shares with many other modern countries, and it presents a range of challenges, so the Taiwan Representative Office in Paris helped to arrange for three students from Tunghai University in Taiwan to take part in a five-week internship at the ACPPA Péan elderly care nursing home in Paris, from January 16 to February 23, 2019. The internship program was sponsored by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, and Péan provided free accommodation and meals for the students.
The students are doing programs in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature in the College of Arts, and the Department of Business Administration and the Department of Finance, both in the College of Management respectively. 
Péan has a capacity of 94 beds, offering long-term accommodation for elderly people, including a special care unit of 22 beds for people with Alzheimer's disease. Its mission is to provide its residents with quality care and companionship, while helping them to maintain their autonomy in keeping with humanistic and ethical values. And it incorporates a weekly market, shops, gardens, and a food service into its focus on presenting the residents with a pleasant living environment.
France is a country where people heavily rely on medications, but Péan personnel conduct thorough observations before prescribing any medicine. Péan pays a lot of attention to looking after residents’ mental health as well as their physical health. They have opportunities to enjoy cross-generational interaction with children from Bout' Chou, an affiliated kindergarten, reading, singing, or cooking together.
The students provided assistance to the administration at Péan, learning about operational and management practicalities at the same time, and they also interacted with the elderly residents, keeping them company, and helped with the meal service and tidying up. They joined in some family outings with the residents and their family members, visiting some monuments and sites in Paris.
Apart from this, they attended conferences on health-related subjects at the Ministry of Health with Ms. Romy Lasserre, the managing director of the elderly care nursing home. All three students and Péan found their time together mutually beneficial. And 
Tunghai University, the hospital system of Paris (AP-HP) and Péan are preparing to sign agreements for more students to undertake internships there. Ms. Romy Lasserre looks forward to welcoming students majoring in medicine, health, or management to Péan in the future, and to sending members of her staff to Taiwan, to gain more in-depth understanding of the operational realities and system of each other’s country.