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Description of Geriatrics
Training Grants Approved in July 2003 Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, $1,995,358 Boston University School of Medicine, in collaboration with Boston Medical Center, plans to strengthen the geriatric training of every medical student, every resident in internal medicine and family medicine, many residents in surgery and other specialties, dozens of faculty members, and hundreds of community-based physicians. It will integrate geriatrics into core preclinical and clinical courses for more than 600 medical students over the course of four years. It also will initiate a Reynolds Geriatrics Special Interest Pathway in which students will follow patients longitudinally over four years, meet regularly with patients and preceptors, participate in a geriatrics interest group, and conduct summer research projects. In addition to strengthening geriatrics for as many as 300 residents, it plans a Chief Resident Immersion Training Program that will teach geriatric principles to 12-14 chief residents from various departments. An existing faculty development program will be expanded to encourage surgeons and related specialists on the faculty to build geriatrics curricula for their residents. A train-the-trainer approach will be used to strengthen the geriatrics knowledge and skills of practicing physicians in 15 affiliated neighborhood health centers. Heavy use will be made of online teaching tools and Web-based curricula. Related information: www.bmc.org/geriatrics/education.htm Contact: Sharon A. Levine, MD Director of Education and Geriatric Fellowship Program Geriatrics Section Co-Director, Center of Excellence in Geriatrics Boston University Medical Center Boston, MA (617) 638-8383
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia,
$1,949,396 Related information: www.cha.emory.edu/reynoldsprogram Contact: Joseph G. Ouslander, MD Director, Emory Center for Health in Aging Director, Division of Geriatric Medicine & Gerontology Wesley Woods Center of Emory University Atlanta, GA
(404) 728-6295 Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, $1,998,805 The second largest medical school in the country, Indiana University trains a student body of 1,120 at its home campus in Indianapolis and eight regional campuses. It plans to establish the Geriatrics Education Network of Indiana (GENI) aimed at strengthening the geriatric training of 840 medical students, 450 residents and 223 practicing physicians during the funding period and continuing to train others well into the future. It will achieve this goal through a train-the-trainer strategy. The first step will be to train 15 physician-educators to serve as expert faculty. They, in turn, will train practicing physicians, 24 university-based and 24 community-based. These 48 practicing physicians will train 160 more physicians, half university-based and half community-based. Training will include strategies to enhance clinical teaching skills and to apply newly acquired knowledge of geriatrics content to improving the quality of care of older adults, with special sensitivity to the importance of the relationships among the patient, family, community resources and physician. Medical students and primary care and emergency medicine residents will have newly created and/or enhanced geriatrics training from this trained corps of expert faculty and practicing physicians. Contact: Glenda R. Westmoreland, MD, MPH Director of Geriatrics Education Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics Department of Medicine Indiana University School of Medicine Indianapolis, IN (317) 630-6398
State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, $1,999,200 Western New York has a greater proportion of older adults within its population than the rest of the state or the country. Those 75 and older are its fastest-growing population. In response to this situation, the region’s medical school, the State University of New York at Buffalo, has committed itself to strengthen the geriatrics training of physicians by creating the UB Geriatric Center of Excellence. The Center will train 400 medical students, 150 primary care residents, 45 surgery residents, 35 emergency medicine residents and over 350 community-based doctors annually. Geriatrics will be integrated into the pre-clinical and clinical curriculum, using problem-based learning with clinical examples. The required internal medicine rotation in the third year will include geriatric home care visits. Geriatrics training for residents will include the collection and feedback of practice-based data, aimed particularly at improving prescribing practices and geriatric assessment. The effort to train practicing physicians will focus primarily on improving care of hospitalized elderly, including recognizing and managing post-operative delirium and pain control. Ongoing faculty development will be woven into all aspects of project activities. Contact: Bruce J. Naughton, MD Head, Division of Geriatrics Department of Medicine State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Buffalo, NY
(716) 859-1262 University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, $1,975,067 The University of Chicago plans to develop, implement and evaluate an innovative geriatrics educational program focusing primarily on the acute hospital care of older adults, aiming to reach all of the University’s medical students and internal medicine residents. This Curriculum for the Hospitalized Aging Medical Patient (CHAMP) will rely heavily on a collaborative faculty development program for geriatricians, hospitalists and general internists, the faculty who do the largest proportion of clinical teaching at the institution. CHAMP will combine the essential principles of geriatric inpatient care with teaching skills and tools suited for the challenges of an evolving inpatient environment. An expanded geriatrics curriculum in the medical school will focus on the clinical skills courses in the first two years of medical school training, the third year general medicine inpatient rotation, and elective courses for fourth year students. Some materials will be developed that can be used to teach at the bedside in blocks of time as short as 10 minutes per topic (“teachable moments”). Other materials will be developed for a Web site to permit students and residents to independently explore topics in depth. CHAMP will take advantage of the University’s leading role in studying hospitalist medicine to incorporate clinical outcome measures to examine the impact of these educational interventions on clinical care and patient well-being. Related information: http://champ.bsd.uchicago.edu/
Contact:
Paula Podrazik, MD
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, $2,000,000 The University of Cincinnati plans to focus
primarily on strengthening the geriatrics training of its residents and
community-based physicians. New required curricula will be developed to
reach 150 general internal medicine residents and 92 residents in family
medicine, psychiatry, obstetrics/gynecology, and physical medicine and
rehabilitation. In addition to the new curricula, all residents will
have a series of standardized encounters with simulated patients and
receive periodic “Fast Facts” e-mails containing clinical information
about common geriatric medicine problems. Most of the curriculum
development will be done by 14 clinician-educator faculty in the
relevant departments who will be given special training as Geriatric
Medicine Faculty Scholars. Cincinnati already has integrated geriatrics
into its medical school curriculum. It will build on that strength to
develop a new four-year, integrated, longitudinal geriatrics enrichment
experience for 32 medical students. The project will develop an
innovative approach to strengthening practicing physicians’ training in
geriatrics. A team of geriatrics experts will visit physicians in their
offices, providing training on specific topics, and introducing office
organization strategies that can help improve care of older patients. Contact: Gregg Warshaw, MD Director, Office of Geriatric Medicine University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Cincinnati, OH
(513) 584-0650 University of Miami, Miami, Florida, $2,000,000 The University of Miami (UM) has dedicated geriatrics curricular time for medical students and residents, and now plans to focus on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. UM believes that providing learners with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for the provision of good care for frail older adults will require training them to be competent in treating the major geriatric syndromes that characterize frailty. These syndromes include dementia, falls, delirium, urinary incontinence, and pressure ulcers. The project, involving UM’s institutional clinical partners — Jackson Memorial Medical Center, Miami VA Medical Center, and Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged — is designed to improve what is learned, not just what is taught. The new curriculum will employ a blend of teacher- and computer-assisted instruction and train 150 medical students and 60 primary care residents per year. By investing heavily in developing the faculty’s capacity to develop, teach, and evaluate curriculum and learner impact, UM hopes to advance the careers of 30 geriatrics educators and to enlist generalist faculty, administrators and residents to reinforce geriatrics. New instructional materials, including Web-based resources, will be accessible by other academic health centers. Contact: Bernard A. Roos, MD Director, Geriatrics Institute Director, Division of Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine University of Miami School of Medicine Miami, FL
(305) 575-3388 University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, $1,899,297 Located in a state with one of the
country’s largest concentrations of rural elderly residents, the School
of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia plans to strengthen
geriatrics in all of its training programs for physicians. It will
create comprehensive, multifaceted educational experiences for medical
students, including new problem-based learning cases, expanded
interaction with seniors, a new geriatric interest group, an enhanced
Acute Care for the Elderly (ACE) program, home visits, fourth year
geriatric rotations and a palliative care elective. It will redesign the
geriatrics rotations for its internal medicine and family practice
residents to a multidisciplinary, community-based format including
inpatient consultation, hospice care, and geriatric care pathway
development. Faculty development will be offered to specialists and sub
specialists, who will serve as geriatric “champions.” They will design
geriatric care pathways, which will serve as a focus for teaching across
multiple specialties. The Missouri Telehealth Network will be employed
to implement new models of continuing education for rural physicians
through distance consultation with geriatricians and others in the care
of elderly patients. Contact: Steven C. Zweig, MD, MSPH Professor and Associate Chair Department of Family and Community Medicine University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine Columbia, MO
(573) 882-1758 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, $1,998,861 The University of New Mexico’s School of
Medicine has established a decentralized infrastructure that relies
heavily on community-based physicians to train its students and
residents and serve a culturally diverse, widely dispersed rural
population. The planned project will make use of that infrastructure and
the School’s acclaimed problem-based, community-oriented curriculum to
strengthen physicians’ training in geriatrics. It will enhance an
already-strong geriatrics curriculum for the School’s 300 medical
students through additional problem-based cases and Web-based modules.
It also will strengthen knowledge of geriatrics among over 200
community-based primary care physicians who help to train the medical
students. Residents’ geriatric training will be strengthened through the
development of additional Web-based modules and improved geriatrics
training of the physicians who train 50 family practice residents in
communities throughout the state. The School will collaborate closely
with the state’s Area Health Education Centers (AHECs) and the Indian
Health Service in its efforts to train community-based physicians. The
instructional material developed in the project will be made available
to all of New Mexico’s physicians through a Web site and CD-ROMs. Contact: Carla J. Herman, MD, MPH Chief, Division of Geriatrics Department of Internal Medicine University of New Mexico School of Medicine Albuquerque, NM
(505) 272-6082 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, $2,000,000 The University of North Carolina’s Medical School will increase the depth and breadth of geriatrics training for all of its 640 medical students, using evidence-based content and case-based instructional materials. Emphasis will be on heightening early awareness and interest in geriatrics, integrating geriatrics into a restructured second year curriculum, and increasing geriatric-rich clinical training opportunities. Geriatric medicine, family medicine and general internal medicine faculty will collaborate to develop a shared comprehensive core curriculum in geriatrics for their residents. This initiative will apply an evidence-based, outcomes-oriented approach to acquiring knowledge of geriatrics, focusing on opportunities for continuous quality improvement of geriatric care, such as fracture reduction, urinary incontinence, dementia and medication errors. The curriculum will make use of computer-based self-instruction modules in geriatric medicine. The project will increase the numbers of faculty, fellows and community-based preceptors prepared to teach geriatrics though additional fellowship options, a “Translating Research into Practice” conference and “Practicing Physician Education” program to train generalist and specialist community physicians. Contact: Jan Busby-Whitehead, MD Director, Program on Aging Chief, Division of Geriatric Medicine University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 966-5945 |