Fisher Alfred L, O'Keefe Elizabeth A, Hanlon Joseph T, Studenski Stephanie A, Hennon John G, Resnick Neil M
Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA.
J Am Geriatr Soc. 2009 Mar;57(3):524-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2008.02135.x. Epub 2009 Jan 17.
During the next several decades, the aging of the "baby boom" generation in the United States will result in a dramatic increase in the number of patients aged 65 and older seeking medical care, but current projections suggest that the shortage of geriatrics-trained specialists will only worsen during this time period. As a result, the care of elderly patients will largely fall to other types of physicians. Consequently, it is imperative that medical school training include exposure to the basic skills needed to care safely for older adults. This goal is challenging, because the number of geriatric medicine faculty in most academic medical centers is small, and multiple other medical specialties are also vying for time in a busy medical school curriculum. Whether a 3-day course conducted during the third year of medical school could teach basic principles of geriatric medicine in a time- and manpower-effective manner was explored. It was found that even this brief exposure to geriatrics could have meaningful effects on student knowledge of and comfort with geriatrics.
在接下来的几十年里，美国“婴儿潮”一代的老龄化将导致寻求医疗护理的65岁及以上患者数量急剧增加，但目前的预测表明，在此期间，老年医学专科医生的短缺情况只会恶化。因此，老年患者的护理工作将主要落在其他类型的医生身上。所以，医学院的培训必须包括让学生接触安全护理老年人所需的基本技能。这个目标具有挑战性，因为大多数学术医疗中心的老年医学教员数量很少，而且其他多个医学专科也在繁忙的医学院课程中争夺时间。研究人员探讨了在医学院三年级期间开设的为期3天的课程是否能够以高效利用时间和人力的方式教授老年医学的基本原则。结果发现，即使只是对老年医学进行这种短暂的接触，也可能对学生的老年医学知识和对该领域的熟悉程度产生有意义的影响。
