Incorporating evidence into clinical teaching: enhanced geriatrics specialty case-based residency presentations

Case-based presentations are widely used in medical education and are a preferred education modality to teach about the care of geriatric patients across a range of medical specialties.

We incorporated evidence-based materials from topical literature syntheses into case-based presentations on the care of geriatric patients for use by specialty residents. These enhanced case-based presentations were used to augment learning and to facilitate detection of additional educational needs for future resident training sessions.

Forty case-based presentations were presented to 11 specialty programs during a 4-year period. The program was popular, and program directors and residents requested additional presentations. Geriatric evidence-based summaries were viewed online 375 times during the course of the project. Geriatric clinical consults increased from an average of 10 consults a year to 141 from 64 different providers during the first year.

Case-based presentation, enhanced with evidence-based summaries of research literature generated by information specialists, is a feasible and effective approach to teaching clinical content. These presentations can be used to target geriatrics educational competencies for resident trainees in nongeriatric specialties.