Nationally, social work students face limited access to clinical education that examines the intersection of older adults, chronic disease, and mental health. This is critical due to a rapidly aging population and a shortage of geriatrics trained social workers. Scant data exists on the effectiveness of clinical simulations to prepare social work…

Seasoned geriatric community health workers offered valuable data that will inform educators and community health workers working with older persons. Geriatric community health workers' views about retirement and about facilitators and barriers that keep them engaged with older adults during retirement were identified. Twenty geriatric community…

This article reports the results of a study on the impact of an online meditation (OMP) program in building resilience and geriatric social work competencies among postgraduate social work students across contexts. The OMP was fairly effective (Cohen's d range=4.84-5.49, p[less than or equal to] 0.012), and students who participated in it…

Professional shortages of geriatrically trained social workers pose a barrier to mental health care for older adults. Integrating graduate social work interns into primary care settings may increase the availability of trained social workers. However, few studies provide guidance on how to develop an interprofessional healthcare placement focused…

The BSW Experiential Learning (BEL) Program aims to infuse intergenerational content into the curriculum and recruit students to the field of social work by implementing face-to-face learning opportunities with older adults. This article discusses and compares the experiences of 4 diverse BEL projects that implemented gero-experiential learning…

Social work education and social work practitioners are being impacted by the significant increase in the older adult population. Most social work faculty members have not been teaching their students how to work effectively with older adults (Hooyman, 2006). Social work educators need to provide more effective gerontology instruction in order to…

The international community is facing the pressure of aging societies. In the United States of America, we will shortly be facing the aging of baby boomers, a dramatically large population expected to peak as senior citizens in 2030 at 70 million. Global societies are facing a crisis: lack of adequately trained and emotionally oriented personnel…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate an experiential learning project with BSW students to see if their perceptions of older adults have changed. The project consisted of an oral history project and presentation that matched BSW students with older adults from diverse ethnic backgrounds to gather their immigration narratives. The study used a…

Quality assurance (QA) in gerontological and geriatric education programs is regarded as essential to maintain standards, strengthen accountability, improve readability of qualifications, and facilitate professional mobility. In this article the authors present a summary of international developments in QA and elaborate four international trends,…

Purpose: Elder self-neglect (ESN) represents half or more of all cases reported to adult protective services. ESN directly affects older adults and also their families, neighbors, and the larger communities around them. ESN has public health implications and is associated with higher than expected mortality rates, hospitalizations, long-term care…

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.…

Men are playing greater roles in the provision of care for older adults with chronic health conditions. Husbands, in particular, encounter many role transformations as they witness their wives grow in levels of dependence as a result of their illnesses. This qualitative study examines the changes that occurred in the roles, responsibilities, and…

This article describes the development and qualitative student outcomes of an intergenerational service-learning course designed to promote social work gerontological competencies. Efforts focused on creating a learning environment to actively promote learning opportunities for students and older adults. The course was hosted at a local, private,…

Introduction: This study uses a cross-sectional approach in terms of evaluating attitudes toward the elderly among health sciences students. The aim of this study was to measure attitudes among final year pregraduate students of seven health care careers. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted with final year students of medicine (M),…

The Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock is addressing one of the most pressing policy issues facing the United States: how to care for the burgeoning number of older adults. In 2001, the Institute created the Arkansas Aging Initiative, which established seven satellite centers on…