Turf, team, and town: a geriatric interprofessional education program

This program provides an interprofessional course to students, allowing them to learn together with each other and their elder teachers.

include refining their professional parameters (turf), learning how to successfully collaborate with other professionals (team), and determining how to effectively design intervention plans for elders within their own communities (town). Various methods of evaluation, such as journals, participation in rounds, and OSCEs, used to assess students' status are described.

Both students and faculty gained clearer perceptions of other professions through their work with each other and the ability to more effectively communicate with other profession. Both also learned, through their relationships with their elder teachers, more about how their specific professions' contributions can affect elders and how elders perceive and contribute to their own communities.

This program has been a successful venture. The challenge is now to devise a way to provide similar experiences to a larger group of students.