Assessing the efficacy of didactic modules in educating health care professionals in interprofessional geriatrics care

The need for improved competency in the health care and caregiving workforce is shaped by several factors. These include demographic shifts, a shortage of trained geriatricians, lack of primary health-care providers with adequate training in geriatrics, and persisting unmet needs reflected by poor health status indicators of older Floridians. Geriatric education to meet the evolving needs of older adults is critical for primary care professionals, residents, and students to meet the ongoing shortage of geriatricians. Nova Southeastern University South Florida Geriatric Workforce Education Program delivered didactic education to two health-care systems involved with geriatric patient care. Participants of the educational program were fellows, primary care residents, and students. The objective of the training program was to build competencies to ensure that all providers have the knowledge and skills to provide care for older adults with chronic illnesses using didactic education on diabetes, oral health, and heart failure. We collected Pre-Post data through REDCap^TM, a mature, secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. The results from the pre-post analysis indicate an increase in knowledge in all three geriatric modules. T-Test of Pre-Post education scores are significant for all three modules indicating a significant increase in knowledge with p < .05. Our study suggest that the educational intervention resulted in an improvement in the knowledge of the participants. Future studies should incorporate detailed knowledge assessments that suggesting an ongoing structured sustainable training program on geriatric issues.