Reformbedarf: Es braucht eine höhere Dosis Geriatrie!

Wer heute mit dem Medizinstudium startet, wird bei der Pensionierung in einer Schweiz arbeiten, in der es viel mehr ältere Menschen geben wird als heute. 2060 werden etwa 1,1 Mio. über 80-jährige Menschen in der Schweiz leben, zum Vergleich sind es heute etwa 400 000

Evidenzbasierte klinische Untersuchung

Auf grosses Interesse an der SwissFamilyDocs Conference 2015 stiess der interaktive Workshop über evidenzbasierte klinische Untersuchung. Die Autoren diskutierten mit dem erfahrenen und engagierten Publikum die Wertigkeit verschiedener klinischer Untersuchungen anhand von Fallvignetten

Effects of geriatric clinical skills training on the attitudes of medical students.

BACKGROUND Physicians' attitudes, knowledge and skills are powerful determinants of quality of care for older patients. Previous studies found that using educational interventions to improve attitude is a difficult task. No previous study sought to determine if a skills-oriented educational intervention improved student attitudes towards elderly patients. METHODS This study evaluated the effect of a geriatric clinical skills training (CST) on attitudes of University of Bern medical students in their first year of clinical training. The geriatric CST consisted of four 2.5-hour teaching sessions that covered central domains of geriatric assessment (e.g., cognition, mobility), and a textbook used by students to self-prepare. Students' attitudes were the primary outcome, and were assessed with the 14-item University of California at Los Angeles Geriatrics Attitudes Scale (UCLA-GAS) in a quasi-randomized fashion, either before or after geriatric CST. RESULTS A total of 154 medical students participated. Students evaluated before the CST had a median UCLA-GAS overall scale of 49 (interquartile range 44-53). After the CST, the scores increased slightly, to 51 (interquartile range 47-54; median difference 2, 95% confidence interval 0-4, P = 0.062). Of the four validated UCLA-GAS subscales, only the resource distribution subscale was significantly higher in students evaluated after the geriatric CST (median difference 1, 95% confidence interval 0-2, P = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS Teaching that targets specific skills may improve the attitudes of medical students towards elderly patients, though the improvement was slight. The addition of attitude-building elements may improve the effectiveness of future skills-oriented educational interventions