The education mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is to train health professionals to benefit VA and the United States. One approach for achieving that mission, along with VA's research and clinical missions, was the establishment of Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Centers (GRECCs) in 1975. These were developed at VA…

The authors describe the prevalence, formation, maintenance, and evaluation of student aging interest groups. They conducted a cross-sectional electronic survey of the 46 academic medical centers funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. To evaluate their group of approximately 50 students, the authors conducted an electronic pretest and…

Purpose of the study: The Alpert Medical School of Brown University began to integrate geriatrics content into all preclerkship courses and key clerkship cases as part of a major medical school curriculum redesign in 2006. This study evaluates students' responses to geriatrics integration within the curriculum using journals kept by volunteer…

Approximately 19% to 20% of all family medicine office visits involve care to patients older than age 65, yet limited research addresses family medicine geriatric education in the outpatient setting. This study explored how geriatric content is incorporated into resident/attending precepting encounters, using direct observation. An observer…

The University of Saskatchewan's Longitudinal Elderly Person Shadowing (LEPS) is an interprofessional senior mentors program (SMP) where teams of undergraduate students in their first year of medicine, pharmacy, and physiotherapy; 2nd year of nutrition; 3rd year nursing; and 4th year social work partner with community-dwelling older adults.…

Medical Readers' Theater (MRT) is an innovative and simple way of helping medical students to reflect on difficult-to-discuss topics in geriatrics medical education, such as aging stereotypes, disability and loss of independence, sexuality, assisted living, relationships with adult children, and end-of-life issues. The authors describe a required…

Adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities (IDD) are now living to late life. Whether geriatricians are being trained to provide care for this clinically complex subpopulation of elders has not been examined. Two thirds of all geriatric fellowship directors in the United States responded to a Web-based survey of curriculum and…

This paper describes an Elder Specialist Program developed by one school of medicine to sensitize medical students to geriatric psychosocial issues. Elder Specialists participate in panel discussions as part of each geriatric session. As an alternative to traditional senior mentoring programs, the Elder Specialist Program provides all students a…

There has been recent international concern that the teaching of geriatrics may be in decline. Research has suggested that support for geriatrics in national undergraduate curricula is the key to effective delivery of teaching in the specialty. We set out to determine the geriatric medicine content in the U.K. generic curriculum, reviewing this in…

Medical care in nursing homes is not provided by board-licensed geriatricians; it mainly comes from physicians in need of educational programs in the field of geriatrics. Such programs, based on curriculum guidelines, should be developed. The purpose of this study was to seek input from nursing home physicians on their perceived needs for training…

The research reported in this article examined attitudes toward the care of the elderly between and among medical students and residents in training. Data were collected with a 16-item attitude questionnaire. Participants were medical students in their introduction period (prior to clinical experience) and residents of the Department of Internal…

The critical need for physicians to become entrenched in the issues of older drivers and public safety is the focus of a training initiative developed as a component of an innovative geriatrics curriculum, Aging (Couple) Across the Curriculum. As the number of aging drivers in the United States rises, physicians can play an important role in…

Administered Palmore's Facts on Aging Quizzes I and II and Facts on Aging Mental Health Quiz as single test to third-year medical students before and after their six-week Community Health and Family Medicine clerkship. Clerkship contributed to small improvement in students' knowledge about aged; net bias scores decreased from pretest to posttest.…

The rapidly growing older population has generated the need for more gerontological or geriatric care professionals. This study evaluated the undergraduate programs offered by the departments of medicine, nursing studies and social work at a university in Hong Kong, based on the data of a recent alumni survey. It also identified factors that…

In response to aging patient demographics and a call for increased formal geriatric training in medical schools, a community volunteer geriatric mentor program, Bridging Generations, was developed to shape attitudes of medical students caring for the elderly. The geriatric mentor experience provided students with unique insight into the challenges…