Geriatric interdisciplinary team training program: evaluation results.

Geriatric interdisciplinary team training has long been a goal in health education with little progress. In 1997, the John A. Hartford Foundation funded eight programs nationally to create Geriatric Interdisciplinary Team Training (GITT) programs. Faculty trained 1,341 health professions students. The results of the evaluation, including presentation of new measures developed to assess interdisciplinary knowledge, are presented, and the implications of the program as a model of interdisciplinary education are discussed. Evaluation data from 537 student trainees are presented. At posttest, GITT trainees demonstrated improvement on all measures of attitudinal change, no change on the geriatric care planning measure, and a change in some of the questions on the test of team dynamics that varied by discipline. Changes were greatest for all the attitudinal measures with the self-reported Team Skills Scale indicating the most significant change--a change that is significant across medicine, nursing, and social work trainees.

Standards of care in geriatric practice.

We propose a set of standards to aid the physician in the care of older patients. These standards are based on the practical experiences of our own group and of others with years of clinical practice in geriatric medicine. The standards also reflect the guidelines, position papers, and deliberations of various organizations concerned with the care of older people. This article does not discuss specific illnesses or the common geriatric syndromes. The proposed standards cover comprehensive care and assessment, especially of vulnerable elders and prevention of disease and disability. We also propose standards for facilitation of care across the health service continuum, care of the nursing home resident, and palliative and hospice care.