Medical Faculty Beliefs: Self-Rated Importance and Confidence in Teaching Geriatrics Primary Care

To evaluate and contrast 25 content areas essential to the primary care of older adults by medical faculty, thus identifying faculty beliefs and areas of possible improvement.

Using measures from the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, and Healthy People 2020, nine practicing clinical faculty identified 25 content areas essential to the primary care of older adults.

A large academic health center in southeastern United States.

Eighty-two university medical faculty.

Faculty rated importance, knowledge, and confidence in teaching the 25 content areas on a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high). Gap scores reflecting the difference in ratings for importance and confidence in teaching were calculated and assessed. The survey had high internal consistency within each of the three domains-Cronbach's α > .94.

The most important content areas were being able to explain details about patient's condition and taking medication clearly, followed by taking age-appropriate history. The three largest gaps were: "evaluating sensory impairment," "identifying and counseling at-risk drivers," and "evaluating cognition." The three smallest gaps were: "explaining prescribed medications," "explaining health conditions in easy-to-understand language," and "taking an age-appropriate patient history and performing a physical assessment."

Medical faculty were comfortable with topics reflecting primary care expertise but expressed less confidence with more specialized topics, such as sensory or cognitive impairment and driving. This may represent key areas for geriatrics training applicable to all those involved in education and training of future healthcare professionals. Integration of specialists (eg, neurologists, psychiatrists) may improve the geriatrics curricula. J Am Geriatr Soc 67:576-580, 2019.