Geriatric medicine curriculum consultations for family practice residency programs: american academy of family physicians residency assistance program/hartford geriatrics initiative

Increasing the quality and quantity of geriatric medicine training for family practice residents is a particular challenge for community-based programs. These programs have an average of only seven full-time equivalent physician faculty. This report summarizes results of the Residency Assistance Program/Hartford Geriatric Initiative (RAP/HGI) geriatric medicine curriculum consultations for family practice (FP) residency programs conducted from 1996 to 2001. This project was developed as part of the RAP in family practice. Ten experienced FP educators were selected and trained as special consultants. Between 1996 and 2001, 39 FP residency programs participated in the 1- to 4-day RAP/HGI consultations. The programs were diverse in size and location. The consultations reached 308 family practice residency faculty members involved in training 807 residents. Program evaluations of the consultants were uniformly in the very good to excellent range, with a mean rating of 4.6 (5-point scale, with 5 indicating excellent). At the end of the initial consultation visit, the residency program faculty and the consultant developed short-term goals for geriatrics program development. Eighty-five percent (33/39) of the programs submitted their curriculum goals in writing. The mean number of goals per program was 4.8 (range = 3-11). Of the 33 programs with written goals, follow-up was documented for 29 programs. Seventy-nine percent of the programs' self-defined educational goals were met during the 6 to 12 months of follow-up (range 50-100%). Ten of the programs implemented all of their educational goals. The RAP/HGI project demonstrated that achievable geriatric medicine curriculum improvements could occur as part of an onsite consultation process.