DFMCH Receives Gift to Improve Geriatrics Education, Nursing Home Care

A new gift to the UW Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH) will act as a planning grant to expand student and resident education in geriatric care, paving the way for future improvements in nursing home care delivery.

Through seed funding from an anonymous donor, DFMCH Professor and Geriatric Services Director Irene Hamrick, MD, will expand an existing library of online videos (available on the DFMCH’s YouTube channel and the SMPH video library) that provides free, accessible professional education on best practices in geriatrics care.

The videos will be geared toward learners across the health professions spectrum: medicine, nursing, physician assistantship, pharmacy, social work, nutrition and physical and occupational therapy.

Dr. Hamrick will also hire student program assistants to help apply for grants to expand the teaching nursing home she directs at Capitol Lakes, a continuing care retirement community in Madison.

The teaching nursing home is a two- to six-week rotation for family medicine and internal medicine residents; geriatric fellows; and nurse practitioner, physician assistant and medical students. Learners provide direct patient care there during rounds held three times per week.

Expansion programs that include creating a new rotation for UW School of Pharmacy students and developing educational sessions on advance directives for Capitol Lakes residents are also already underway.

The gift is a way to address the critical shortage of geriatric providers at all professional levels. In a 2008 report, the Institute of Medicine stated that as the population of seniors grows to comprise approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population, they will face a health care workforce that is too small and critically unprepared to meet their health needs. The report called for more health care providers to be trained in the basics of geriatric care.

“Unfortunately, 10 years later, the shortage described by the Institute of Medicine is worse,” said Dr. Hamrick. “We are grateful for this gift, which will help us begin to mitigate this shortage by educating interprofessional health care providers to be able to provide high-quality care for older people.”

Development Update

We are also grateful to the following people who made donations to the DFMCH from January through March 2018:

* Donates to this fund through monthly payroll deduction

Thank you for your support!

Published: April 2018