Creating a Geriatrics Curriculum in a Continuing Care Retirement Community

The new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) guidelines for family medicine residencies increased training requirements for caring for older adults. These guidelines prompted changes to the current geriatrics curriculum at the Trident/Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Family Medicine Residency Program. Changes to the training requirements and the residency geriatric experiences reflect an increasingly aging population and many unmet needs in caring for older adults.

To meet accreditation requirements and the needs of our population, the residency program established a new partnership with a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) and hired another provider to coordinate the curriculum. Changes to the curriculum included more time spent in our CCRC, better longitudinal patient visit continuity, a coordinated interprofessional didactic curriculum, more elective opportunities in geriatrics, and online pharmacotherapy quizzes. The curriculum was assessed with a validated 10-question pre/postresident survey.

Resident responses revealed increased comfort in caring for a geriatric population, increased desire to focus on geriatrics in their medical career, and increased participation in the geriatrics track.

With changes in ACGME requirements, family medicine residency programs must develop a comprehensive curriculum to care for an increasing elderly population. The Trident/MUSC Family Medicine Residency provides a model curriculum for other programs seeking to improve training for their residents and meet these requirements.