If I Fell Down Would a Tongue Depressor Help?

So what is a Geriatric Education Center supposed to do?  There are 5 goals written into the law that drives the grant.  #1 is the biggie!

1. Improve the training of health professionals in Geriatrics
2. Develop & Disseminate Curricula related to the treatment of health problems of the elderly
3. Support the training and retraining of faculty to provide instruction in Geriatrics
4. Support continuing education for health professionals who provide Geriatric care
5. Provide students with clinical training in hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory care and senior centers

So, in a nutshell, create course material and train all kinds of providers.  

More and more though we are interested in proving that the WHAT that we do makes a DIFFERENCE.   

Just because The Carolina Geriatric Education Center Partners have trained over 10,000 doctors, nurses, Pas, NPs, pharmacists, social workers, physical therapists etc etc…..does that mean that care has been improved?  So HRSA is pushing us towards documenting change in clinical practice that results from all of this training.  

Mountain AHEC lead the way last year recruiting three physician practices and letting us track whether Falls Prevention Training produces more thorough screening of the population.  Last year Southern Regional AHEC piloted with a small CCRC and now they are expanding to 3 community based practices.  Both MAHEC and Southern Regional found trends that indicate practice change DOES occur and screening rates go up even with 1 hour trainings.  Awareness is raised and buy-in created to create a culture of screening.

It’s not just about training anymore! It’s about outcomes.  Imagine you are in a doctor’s office and you see all of the diplomas and tongue depressors.  So you assume he or she knows what to do with those tools and that you will get better.  But what if she puts the tongue depressor not uh in your mouth?  Same idea.