Quality improvement (QI) initiatives are critical in the care of older adults who are more vulnerable to substandard care. QI education meets aspects of core Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education competencies and prepares learners for the rising focus on performance measurement in health care. The authors developed, implemented, and…

Medical graduates require positive attitudes toward older people with cognitive impairment, in addition to knowledge and skills in the diagnosis and management of dementia. The Student Training Project in Dementia (STriDE) project was conducted to ensure that these needs are met through curricula in Western Australian medical schools. Two medical…

Virginia Commonwealth University developed an enhanced medical student geriattic curriculum that includes required home visits and nursing home visits for second year students (180 per year), an annual Forum on Aging for all first and second year students, and small group exercises. We added 30 hours of basic science material to pre-clinical…

A program sensitizing health professional students to the elderly's health care needs produced student information gains in the area of aging, favorable changes in attitudes toward the elderly, and positive course evaluations. The broad range of evaluation approaches and the multi-year replications demonstrate the course's value in a pharmacy…

Students at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York taking a required clinical clerkship in geriatrics were surveyed before and after the clerkship on their knowledge of geriatrics, attitudes toward the elderly, and evaluation of the rotation. (Author/MLW)

Exposure to gerontological content has been shown to positively influence student attitudes toward elders. Our School of Nursing recently phased out one curriculum while implementing a new integrated curriculum. In the former, aging content was presented in a first-semester senior course. In the new curriculum, students were introduced to aging…