Education in geriatric medicine

Geriatric medicine, the branch of general medicine concerned with the clinical, preventive, remedial and social aspects of illness in the elderly and with the maintenance of their health became of importance with the advent of the British National Health Service which uncovered an immense amount of illness among older people. This and the future demographic changes prompted the teaching of medical students gerontology i.e., the study of the ageing process and geriatric medicine. Attempts at preventing illness and at diagnosing disease early were made to try to maintain and, where possible, to improve the health of older people by such methods as motivation, pre-retirement training and early ascertainment of illness. Symptoms of disease change with advancing age and diagnosis becomes difficult due to atypical and insidious symptomatology while the common occurrence of multiple pathology can unfortunately encourage polypharmacy. Specialised instruction in geriatric medicine is thus desirable and the recommendation is made that every medical school should create an academic unit in this subject to provide undergraduate and postgraduate teaching about the process of ageing and the clinical problems of older people with additional instruction on the general management of the elderly both in their own homes and in the essential and varied institutional settings. As well as medical students many other groups such as nurses, paramedicals, social workers and all those who care for the elderly benefit from training.