Curriculum Development in Geriatric Rehabilitation at Brody SOM Grant uri icon

abstract

  • The Brody School of Medicine (BSOM) at East Carolina University is a national leader in the education and training of primary care, generalist physicians and the delivery of health services to rural and underserved populations. The Brody School of Medicine is located in rural eastern North Carolina, where today 14 percent of the population is older than 65-higher than both the state and national averages. Furthermore, in the decade from 1990 to 2000, the proportion of adults age 75 and older in eastern North Carolina increased 17.4%. These demographics pose tremendous challenges in addressing the health needs of our rapidly growing older population. We are committed to meeting those challenges, and have recently embarked on a comprehensive educational program expansion initiative (across all levels of the continuum of physician education) to improve our overall approach to geriatrics education. Our overall Project Goal is to adequately prepare our resident physicians throughout their four year training program with the fundamentals of caring for older adults, with emphasis on medical management of geriatric syndromes, geriatric rehabilitation and chronic illness along the patient lifespan. Our proposal development process has included an in-depth assessment by faculty of the existing components of geriatric training currently received by PM&R resident physicians at the Brody School of Medicine. Our review determined that our existing curriculum in geriatric rehabilitation reflects a small amount of attention to the special needs of older patients, but is not comprehensive and does not feature sufficient clinical experience. Therefore, we will develop a new curriculum that includes both didactic and clinical components featuring structured teaching sessions across the PGY -2 through PGY -4 training years. We will also assess this curriculum and its effectiveness in terms of individual, rotation and program educational outcomes. The new geriatric rehabilitation curriculum created via this project will provide the following activities, all of which will be jointly conducted by PM&R and Geriatrics training programs and involve learners from both programs: 1. PM&R resident physicians will rotate approximately 1/2 day per week (for 12 weeks) in one of three geriatrics-based clinical rotations including the geriatric outpatient clinic; the Golden Living skilled nursing facility (located immediately across the street from our medical school/hospital complex); and/or the Cypress Glen Retirement facility in Greenville, NC (a private, non-profit agency affiliated with our health system and located approximately 15 minutes from our complex; see http://www.cypressglenretirementcommunitv.com/ for information). 2. As part of the above activity, PM&R residents will also attend multidisciplinary geriatrics didactic presentations on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for one hour. 3. PM&R residents will also be expected to accompany geriatrics faculty on designated home visits to older patients in the area; this is a structured clinical program led by two faculty members in the division of geriatrics (Dr. Irene Hamrick and Dr. Emily Bray). 4. Faculty from both PM&R and Geriatric1 will develop six new online modules to be completed by residents from both departments. These modules will focus on both medical management and rehabilitation issues which affect older patients. The module topics will be: prosthetics & orthotics; de-conditioning issues; spasticity management; gait training/fall prevention/ambulation aids; cardiopulmonary rehabilitation; and management of chronic pain. These modules will be offered via our existing online course management system (Blackboard). 5. Develop database concerning geriatric patients 6. Geriatrics fellows will give new lectures in the PM&R resident didactic series on the following topics: physiology of normal

date/time interval

  • July 2007 - October 2009