Developing future nursing home medical directors: a curriculum for geriatric medicine fellows

Long term care facilities are important sites of care for elderly adults. Despite a growing need and interest in medical direction in nursing homes, there have been limited educational opportunities in this area for geriatric medicine fellows. This article describes a novel medical director's curriculum for first-year geriatric medicine fellows to prepare them for the role of nursing home medical director. This novel curriculum has been integrated into the Department of Geriatric Medicine's Fellowship training program at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii. The curriculum consists of seven seminars that have been integrated into the didactic sessions during the first year of fellowship. Core content areas include: (1) roles and responsibilities of the medical director, (2) infection control, (3) physician documentation, (4) federal regulations and state surveys, (5) quality improvement, (6) culture change in nursing homes, and (7) transitions in care. All topics were discussed using the framework described by the American Medical Directors Association's position statement on the roles and responsibilities of the nursing home medical director. To our knowledge, this is the first curriculum in the medical literature that is designed to prepare geriatric medicine fellows for roles as medical directors in nursing homes.