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Not the same old, same old

Improving the Patient Experience

  • Improving the Patient Experience

    Improving the whole patient journey to ensure a positive patient experience, from clinical and administrative, to financial, and everything in between.

Not the same old, same old

January 20, 2019

Not the same old, same old

New physicians, no matter their specialty, are likely to care for elderly patients, says Mandi Sehgal, MD, director of the Geriatrics Curriculum Thread at FAU.  And in the future this will be increasingly important because fewer new physicians are choosing geriatric medicine: The AAMC’s 2018 Physician Specialty Data Report found that the number of first-year residents and fellows studying geriatrics declined 14.3% between 2012 and 2017.

“Even pediatricians will,” Sehgal says. “Sometimes people will bring grandchildren to the office and that pediatrician may see that the grandparent might be a fall risk or may see signs of cognitive impairment. It applies across the spectrum.”

FAU is one of the medical schools putting geriatrics front and center. The college of medicine hired the former President of the American Geriatrics Society, Joseph Ouslander, MD, to develop and direct the geriatrics program, and the school weaves geriatrics education into almost every single one of its classes, says Sehgal.

For example, a neuroscience and behavior course includes an entire section on dementia, and staff and caregivers are brought in from the local memory and wellness center.

“The principles of geriatric medicine are just good medicine,” Sehgal says.

R. Sean Morrison, MD, agrees. The Ellen and Howard C. Katz professor and chair for the Brookdale department of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is leading the effort there to get its students up to speed on aging and the physiology of aging, not by requiring a separate class or curriculum, but by incorporating the care of older adults into all preclinical experiences, Morrison says. Students are required to make house calls and spend time in ambulatory care practices where patients skew older.

The full AAMC News article can be viewed at this link.  

 

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