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More Medical Training Needed To Care For Growing
Geriatric Population
Feb. 27, 2005 - The changing medical needs of the
growing 65-and-over population in the United States are not being met by
current medical education, University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers
warn.
What is required, they say, is more standardized
geriatric training across all medical specialties.
An article in the March 2005 issue of Academic
Medicine says older adults are making more visits to nonprimary-care
specialists and suggests faculty development and curriculum changes be
made to better prepare future physicians to handle this growing patient
base.
In 2001, 53 percent of ambulatory (outpatient)
visits by patients 65 and older were to nonprimary-care specialists, an
increase of 13 percent from 1980.
"Until recently, most physician visits by geriatric
patients were to primary-care providers," says lead author Elizabeth
Bragg, PhD, of UC's Institute for the Study of Health. "The changing
needs of the geriatric population have shifted that trend. Now, more
than 50 percent of all outpatient visits by geriatric patients are to
nonprimary-care specialists."
The authors reviewed program requirements of 91
specialties accredited by the residency review committees of the
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). They
found, as of 2003, that only 27 of the 91 specialties had specific
geriatric training requirements. And these requirements, say the
authors, have very modest expectations.
"In other words," they say, "70 percent of the
graduate medical education specialties training non-pediatric physicians
do not have specific geriatrics curriculum requirements. Yet once these
physicians establish their clinical practices, many adults over the age
of 65 will become their patients."
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