Geriatric Education Part II: The Effect of a Well Elderly Program on Medical Student Attitudes toward Geriatric Patients

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Abstract
Objective: To assess impact of exposure to healthy elderly on medical students' attitudes toward the elderly.Design: Prospective, randomized, controlled intervention trial.Setting: Community‐based Well Elderly Program.Participants: Ninety‐three fourth year medical students on a required Geriatric Medicine clerkship who were assigned to either a tertiary care university medical center or a teaching nursing home.Intervention: Thirty‐five students were randomly assigned to participate in a Well Elderly Program and were compared to a control group of 58 students at equivalent sites who did not participate.Measurements: Pre‐ and post‐rotation, students were given the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD), a validated geriatric attitudinal scale.Main Results: By repeated measures analysis of variance, the difference between pre‐ and post‐rotation ASD scores were most significant for students who participated in the Well Elderly Program; site did not exert a significant interaction effect.Conclusion: These results underscore the importance of exposure to healthy older people on effecting positive attitude changes among medical students on geriatrics rotations.

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