Reynolds Foundation awards $2 million to IU for geriatrics education

By Pam Perry

Dr. Glenda Westmoreland, an associate professor of clinical medicine at IU, is the principal investigator of the grant, which was awarded to establish the Geriatrics Education Network of Indiana (GENI). Its goal is to prepare the physician workforce to care for the state’s aging population by strengthening the geriatrics training of 840 medical students, 450 residents and 223 practicing physicians throughout Indiana.

"Through GENI, we plan to create a standard of excellence for geriatrics education across the state that ensures that all older Hoosiers benefit from quality care," said Westmoreland, who also is director of geriatrics education in the IU Geriatrics Program and a scientist at the IU Center for Aging Research.

Next month, Westmoreland will begin planning the training for 15 faculty members at IU to be the program’s expert faculty. Some of them are geriatricians in internal medicine and family medicine; all are clinician educators who are recognized as exceptional teachers. In the second year, the group will train 24 university-based and 24 community-based physicians, primarily located near the school’s nine education centers in Fort Wayne, Muncie, Terre Haute, South Bend, Gary, West Lafayette, Bloomington, Evansville and Indianapolis. These 24 physicians will then train another 80 physicians, half with the school and half in the community during the third year. This will continue to ripple throughout the physician community the fourth year when an additional 80 physicians are trained. During the four years and beyond, the physicians will engage students and residents in the process, with the goal of more than doubling the students’ learning hours in geriatric medicine and increasing the residents’ learning hours in geriatrics by nearly 30 percent.

To demonstrate their progress, physicians and their office staff will identify, implement and evaluate specific projects that will improve medical care to the population of elderly patients seen in their practices. Residents and medical students will be involved in these projects from their inception.

According to Westmoreland, the projects will be very doable and easy to replicate in other physicians’ practices. "Something as simple as incorporating a low exam table to help patients who have mobility limitations might be one project," said Westmoreland. Another example of a project might be "to write down legible, large print notes as the physicians and staff talk for the patient to take home with him or her. These will help the patient and family to remember the plan discussed during the office visit."

The new program will benefit from the existing infrastructure at the School of Medicine that includes the IU Geriatrics Program and Center for Aging Research, the Senior Care program at Wishard Health Services, the Clinical Skills Education Center which is available for training and testing, a continuing medical education program and extramural funding for curricular innovations.

The program also has attracted participation from the Center for Geriatric Medicine at Methodist Hospital and the Geriatrics and Extended Care program at Roudebush VA Medical Center, both in Indianapolis. In addition, it will work closely with the recently funded Relationship Centered Care Program, established through a $2 million grant from the Fetzer Foundation.