The geriatric interdisciplinary team training (GITT) program

Geriatric interdisciplinary team training (GITT) is an initiative funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation since 1995. Building from the substantial knowledge gained from the Veteran's Administration project in interdisciplinary team training and lessons from the Pew Foundation initiative, GITT was reconceived by the Foundation to address the need for teams in the care of older adults in the new era of managed care and health care cost containment. This training program has served to help us understand attitudes toward teams, how teams function, and how teams should be trained in the changing health care environment, where length of stay is dramatically different from the earlier team training projects. This introductory paper provides an overview of GITT, and the companion papers give detail of the GITT curricula, measures and lessons learned.