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…

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…

The virtual patient is a case-based computer program that combines textual information with multimedia elements such as audio, graphics, and animation. It is increasingly being utilized as a teaching modality by medical educators in various fields of instruction. The inherent complexity of older patients and the shortage of geriatrics educators…

This study assesses how effective classroom sessions are at teaching geriatric competencies to medical students. At Stony Brook Medical School, most geriatric competencies are taught in the Ambulatory Care Clerkship during small-group educational sessions. Clinical exposure to reinforce these specialized skills varies with preceptor assignment. A…

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (UMMSM) has developed and implemented a competency-based undergraduate medical education (UME) curriculum that targets 61 learning objectives for three geriattic syndromes: dementia, falls, and delirium. This curriculum redesign changed the educational focus from what is taught to what is learned.…

This paper describes development, implementation, and evaluation strategies of a longitudinal geriatric curriculum, the Senior Mentor Program (SMP). The rationale for exposing undergraduate medical students to healthy, community-dwelling older adults is to use the relationship and activities as vehicles for improving knowledge of aging and…

Data gathered via questionnaires from 96 medical schools indicate that U.S. medical schools continue to assign a fairly low priority to the teaching of geriatrics. Only a few schools offer it as a separate subject, and almost none require it. (LBH)

Geriatric content in a medical school curriculum was assayed by surveying faculty course directors and students about course content, by conducting an independent review of course content, and by analyzing the content of course examinations. The students' assessments of geriatric content were found to be not valid. (Author/MLW)

A program undertaken to assess the feasibility of incorporating gerontology and geriatrics into the first- and second-year curriculum at a family medicine-oriented medical school is described, and student reactions are discussed. It is recommended that the teaching of gerontology and geriatrics begin the first year. (Author/MLW)

In this article we will focus on geriatric medical education in Israel and will review our experience in this field. A coordinated effort of the Ministry of Health and the Israeli Medical Association led to the establishment of a modern geriatric system and to the recognition of geriatrics as a medical specialty in the early 1980s. All four…

At the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine, we developed a voluntary senior-mentor program, the Senior Teacher Educator Partnership (STEP), for first- and second-year medical students. Using qualitative research methods, we examined the impact of STEP on medical students' attitudes and then assessed the congruence of what is learned…

Most medical school curricula do not equip students with adequate attitudes, knowledge and skills to care for elderly populations. We describe an effective geriatric curricular infusion model compatible with preserving the overall curricula schema. Course and clerkship directors, staff and faculty from the Office of Educational Development, Center…

In 2000, the Senior Mentor Program was implemented as an innovative, instructional method in the University of South Carolina's medical school curriculum designed to enhance and strengthen student training in geriatrics. This study qualitatively analyzed second-year medical students' and senior participants' perceptions of and attitudes towards…