TY - JOUR
T1 - Geriatric Emergency Medicine Fellowships
T2 - Current State of Specialized Training for Emergency Physicians in Optimizing Care for Older Adults
AU - the Academy of Geriatric Emergency Medicine
AU - Rosen, Tony
AU - Liu, Shan W.
AU - Cameron-Comasco, Lauren
AU - Clark, Sunday
AU - Mulcare, Mary R.
AU - Biese, Kevin
AU - Magidson, Phillip D.
AU - Tyler, Katren R.
AU - Melady, Don
AU - Thatphet, Phraewa
AU - Wongtangman, Thiti
AU - Elder, Natalie M.
AU - Stern, Michael E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The importance of improving ED care for older adults has been long recognized, but it has begun to receive increased focus. EP researchers have been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Foundation, the American College of Emergency Physicians’ (ACEP) Emergency Medicine Foundation, and other public and private funders to explore high‐priority geriatric emergency medicine (GEM) questions. An expert panel has developed geriatric competencies for EM residents to guide curriculum development. Furthermore, SAEM’s Academy of Geriatric Emergency Medicine, launched in 2009, and ACEP’s Geriatric Emergency Medicine Section are growing in membership and programmatic activities.
Funding Information:
The Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines were developed and published in 2014, through a collaboration between SAEM, ACEP, the American Geriatrics Society, and the Emergency Nurses Association to facilitate improvements in ED care to older adults. These guidelines focus on staffing, education, enhanced policies and procedures, transitions of care, equipment, and performance improvement measures. Based on these guidelines, ACEP launched the Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) program in 2018. The GEDA program accredits EDs for geriatric expertise at different levels (Levels 1, 2, 3) based on an ED’s initiatives to improve and measure quality of care for older adults. Additionally, the Geriatric ED Collaborative (GEDC) was created with funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Gary and Mary West Foundation. The GEDC assists hospital systems interested in making their community EDs more appropriate for care of older adults using the guidelines. GEDC works through collaboration with local leadership, on‐site workshops, assistance with quality improvement projects, and information sharing. GEDC leaders have developed the Geriatric Emergency Care Applied Research (GEAR) Network, which is establishing research priorities, standardized data approaches, and measures for common geriatric emergency care syndromes. This network is also building a validated data bank to support opportunities to conduct geriatric emergency care research and facilitating future multicenter studies. As a result of these efforts, GEM is growing as a subspecialty within emergency medicine.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
PY - 2020/2/1
Y1 - 2020/2/1
N2 - Improving emergency department (ED) care for older adults is a critical issue in emergency medicine. Institutions throughout the United States and Canada have recognized the growing need for a workforce of emergency physician (EP) leaders focused on clinical innovation, education, and research and have developed specialized fellowship training in geriatric emergency medicine (GEM). We describe here the overview, structure, and curricula of these fellowships as well as successes and challenges they have encountered. Seven GEM fellowships are active in the United States and Canada, with five offering postresidency training only, one offering fellowship training during residency only, and one offering both. The backbone of the curriculum for all fellowships is the achievement of core competencies in various aspects of GEM, and each includes clinical rotations, teaching, and a research project. Evaluation strategies and feedback have allowed for significant curricular changes as well as customization of the fellowship experience for individual fellows. Key successes include an improved collaborative relationship with geriatrics faculty that has led to additional initiatives and projects and former fellows already becoming regional and national leaders in GEM. The most critical challenges have been ensuring adequate funding and recruiting new fellows each year who are interested in this clinical area. We believe that interest in GEM fellowships will grow and that opportunities exist to combine GEM fellowship training with a focus in research, administration, or health policy to create unique new types of highly impactful specialized training. Future research may include exploring former fellows’ postfellowship experiences, careers, accomplishments, and contributions to GEM to better understand the impact of GEM fellowships.
AB - Improving emergency department (ED) care for older adults is a critical issue in emergency medicine. Institutions throughout the United States and Canada have recognized the growing need for a workforce of emergency physician (EP) leaders focused on clinical innovation, education, and research and have developed specialized fellowship training in geriatric emergency medicine (GEM). We describe here the overview, structure, and curricula of these fellowships as well as successes and challenges they have encountered. Seven GEM fellowships are active in the United States and Canada, with five offering postresidency training only, one offering fellowship training during residency only, and one offering both. The backbone of the curriculum for all fellowships is the achievement of core competencies in various aspects of GEM, and each includes clinical rotations, teaching, and a research project. Evaluation strategies and feedback have allowed for significant curricular changes as well as customization of the fellowship experience for individual fellows. Key successes include an improved collaborative relationship with geriatrics faculty that has led to additional initiatives and projects and former fellows already becoming regional and national leaders in GEM. The most critical challenges have been ensuring adequate funding and recruiting new fellows each year who are interested in this clinical area. We believe that interest in GEM fellowships will grow and that opportunities exist to combine GEM fellowship training with a focus in research, administration, or health policy to create unique new types of highly impactful specialized training. Future research may include exploring former fellows’ postfellowship experiences, careers, accomplishments, and contributions to GEM to better understand the impact of GEM fellowships.
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U2 - 10.1002/aet2.10428
DO - 10.1002/aet2.10428
M3 - Article
C2 - 32072116
AN - SCOPUS:85078783885
SN - 2472-5390
VL - 4
SP - S122-S129
JO - AEM Education and Training
JF - AEM Education and Training
IS - S1
ER -