An advanced course in long term care for geriatric medicine fellows

Long term care deserves focused attention within a geriatric medicine fellowship curriculum to ensure that graduates are prepared not only for clinical care but also for the leadership, administrative, educational, quality improvement, and health policy aspects of their future roles. This report describes the curriculum development and program evaluation of an advanced course in long term care for geriatric medicine fellows and other graduate/post-graduate health professionals at Duke University. Course evaluation had 4 goals: (1) to determine how well the learning objectives were met; (2) to evaluate individual components of the course to improve subsequent offerings; (3) to determine whether additional topics needed to be added; and (4) to evaluate the effectiveness of the discussion forum component of the course. Learner self-efficacy improved within all competency areas but especially those of practice-based learning and system-based practice. Evaluation results led to curriculum revision that has maintained course relevance and sustained it within the larger geriatrics fellowship curriculum. Components of this course can be easily adapted to other curricular settings for fellows and residents.