@article{a737fcc6fd684a4fb8fc8f66e1d99351,
title = "Prevalence, Formation, Maintenance, and Evaluation of Interdisciplinary Student Aging Interest Groups",
abstract = "The authors describe the prevalence, formation, maintenance, and evaluation of student aging interest groups. They conducted a cross-sectional electronic survey of the 46 academic medical centers funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. To evaluate their group of approximately 50 students, the authors conducted an electronic pretest and posttest of attitudes toward interdisciplinary education and knowledge about aging. Twenty-nine of 32 responding institutions funded by the Reynolds Foundation conducted a group; only medical students participated in one half of these groups. Panel presentations were the most prevalent group activity. Evaluation of their group revealed that an interprofessional service learning experience had the greatest impact on student perceptions of the educational preparation and competency of other disciplines. At posttest, medical students in their group had significantly less positive perceptions of actual cooperation between disciplines than did physical therapy or pharmacy students. Aging interest groups conducted by institutions funded by the Reynolds Foundation did not have a high level of interdisciplinary participation. Intermittent exposure to other disciplines during a small number of group activities may be insufficient to overcome {"}disciplinary split{"} and achieve interprofessional team orientation without changes in the structure of medical education.",
keywords = "aging interest group, geriatrics, interdisciplinary, interprofessional, student, team skills",
author = "Jones, {Katherine J.} and Vandenberg, {Edward V.} and Lisa Bottsford",
note = "Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the assistance of Zhenya Hurd, Marianna Drootin, and Cynthia Greenan, MLS, from the Reynolds Foundation, who provided the sampling frame of grant recipients for the study. Funding Information: The AIG at the University Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) was formed in the fall 2001, with funding from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. One mission of the Reynolds Foundation is to fund activities intended to improve the quality of life of America{\textquoteright}s frail older adults by improving training of physicians in geriatrics (Donald W. Reynolds Foundation). Our AIG became interdisciplinary—recruiting students from disciplines other than medicine— in the fall 2007 when we received funding from the Health Services and Resource Administration (HRSA) for the UNMC Geriatric Education Center (GEC). HRSA required that all GEC activities be interdisciplinary, so all students on our campus (medicine, pharmacy, allied health, and nursing) were invited to participate. Our AIG now consists of approximately 120 students from the disciplines of medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy (PT), physician assistants (PA), and nursing. An executive board of three to seven students meets monthly to plan and coordinate two to three activities of interest to the students each semester. These activities include panel presentations, field trips, interdisciplinary team competitions (e.g. “Geopardy” game), and a service learning health fair for older adults. Attendance at activities ranges from 17 to 100 students. Since 2009, approximately 35 AIG students have conducted two health fairs. During these health fairs, the students collaborated across disciplines to screen older adults for high blood pressure, risk for falls and osteoporosis, hearing impairment, and nutritional deficiencies; and to provide counseling regarding medication management. Each AIG activity is intended to expose the students to the clinical skills of each discipline, the realities of the aging process, and the knowledge that high quality, safe care for older adults is team based. Funding Information: In the fall 2009, we conducted a cross-sectional electronic survey of 173 representatives from the 46 academic medical centers that had received grants from the Reynolds Foundation since 1997. We received this list of representatives from the staff of the Reynolds Foundation. The survey contained closed and open-ended questions regarding the institution{\textquoteright}s student AIG activities and operations. In the survey instructions, we defined an AIG as, “any voluntary group of health professions students who explore topics related to aging.” We sent two invitations to complete the survey approximately 2 weeks apart. This study was conducted as an extension of the evaluation activities of the UNMC Geriatric Education Center, which was funded by HRSA Grant # D31HP08840. It was approved by the UNMC Institutional Review Board. A copy of the survey is available from the corresponding author upon request. Funding Information: This study has two major strengths. First, we achieved a response rate of 70% from the institutions that were funded by the Reynolds Foundation since 1997. This rate is considered very good for analysis and reporting (Babbie, 1998). Second, the assessment of AIG activities from Reynolds Foundation grant recipients provided a context from which to better understand and disseminate “lessons learned” from the evaluation of our AIG at UNMC. A weakness of this study is that those institutions funded by the Reynolds Foundation are not a representative sample of academic medical centers. Because of the Foundation{\textquoteright}s mission, Reynolds Foundation recipients are more likely to form and evaluate AIGs than institutions not funded by the Reynolds Foundation. Therefore, our results are likely to overestimate the national prevalence of AIGs.",
year = "2011",
month = oct,
doi = "10.1080/02701960.2011.618958",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "32",
pages = "321--341",
journal = "Gerontology and Geriatrics Education",
issn = "0270-1960",
publisher = "Routledge",
number = "4",
}