Curriculum on Resident Education in Care of Older Adults in Acute, Transitional and Extended Care Settings

Abstract

Most geriatric care is provided in non-hospital settings. Internal Medicine and Family Medicine residents should therefore learn about these different clinical sites and acuity levels of care. To help facilitate this learning, a geriatrics training curriculum for internal medicine residents was developed that focused on cognition, function, goals of care and medication management in both in-hospital and non-hospital settings. Residents rotated through both in-hospital and non-hospital settings as one block rotation. They took a test of geriatric learning before the rotation and then took the same test at the end of the rotation. Residents showed an improvement in several geriatric domains on completion of a combined in-hospital and non-hospital rotation curriculum. We concluded that the development and implementation of a combined rotation curriculum has practical application to resident learning and the potential to improve geriatrics care outside of hospital settings.