The Residency Training Program in Geriatrics is a required one month rotation for Internal medicine (IM) PGY 2 residents and family medicine (FM) PGY 3 residents. This encompasses experience in inpatient, ambulatory, home visiting and long-term care. Additional instruction includes: clinic co-precepting, geriatric conferences in the residency curriculum and clinical interactions in the acute hospital setting.
Core topics of content in the residency curriculum include:
Physiology and epidemiology of aging
Medical geriatric assessment (history, physical examination and labs) and cognitive assessment
Cognitive impairment, dementia, depression and delirium
Functional status, ADLs and IADLs
Interdisciplinary team coordination of care
Osteoporosis and fractures, including falls
Urinary incontinence
Geriatric pharmacology
Social support systems and environmental assessment
Health care systems and insurances (home care, long term care, etc.)
Residency Goals and Objectives
The goal of training for residents is to optimize the quality of primary care, both acute and chronic, which residents provide to older adults. The training concentrates on medical and neuropsychiatric geriatric syndromes, including dementia, falls and delirium. Specifically, the principle objectives are to:
Enhance knowledge of aging psysiology and diseases common to the elderly, particularly complex medical and neuropsychiatric syndromes.
Improve skills in geriatric assessment, specifically the medically oriented physical examination of an older adult, cognitive assessment, functional status examination including gait and the staging and description of skin ulcers, if present.
Expand ability to integrate clinical, cognitive, functional and social assessment data into a treatment and management plan to optimize care of the elderly.
Increase familiarity with services, health insurances and other components of the health care and support system serving the elderly (e.g. home care, hospice, long-term care).
Improve physicians' understanding of bioethics and its implications for medical decision-making for the elderly, particularly for those who lack capacity.