The findings of a survey of undergraduate geriatric medicine education were presented in poster form at the BGS Autumn meeting in Harrogate.

A preliminary report has already been circulated to the members of the BGS Education and Training Committee and the full report in Word format can be downloaded here.

Key Results
From the responses received, geriatric medicine was found to be taught in all but two medical schools. Human ageing is on the curriculum for the vast majority. There were no comments suggesting that the time or attention devoted to the teaching of geriatric medicine or human ageing should be reduced.

The importance of academic geriatricians in organising and developing teaching was emphasised. Although the main input from academics seemed to be in the planning and co-ordination of the curriculum, there was still involvement in teaching. Just over half of responding medical schools had an academic department of geriatric medicine.

There was majority support that geriatric medicine should be taught separately, although in practice it tended to be taught with another subject, for example general medicine or psychiatry. Views on when during the course geriatric medicine should be taught were disparate and this was reflected in the medical schools' replies. A range of methods and locations for teaching were supported. Although the multi-disciplinary nature of geriatric medicine was recognised by support for other disciplines to be involved in student teaching, this view was perhaps surprisingly not universally held.
Academics and Committee members thought that geriatric medicine should be examined separately. However, again in practice it was examined with other subjects such as general medicine, psychiatry and general practice.

Comments by the heads of medical schools indicated support for the development of new approaches to the teaching of geriatric medicine, including special study modules (student selected components), inter-professional education and integration of geriatric medicine with other subjects.

Recommendations
It is felt that the Society should continue to promote and regularly update its curriculum for undergraduate medical students, perhaps developing a "model curriculum" for use by medical schools.

The Society could allow a greater proportion of the biannual meetings to be devoted to undergraduate teaching and if there is sufficient interest, establish a Teacher's Section or Special Interest Group. This could enable both networking and the presentation of short papers which do not have to conform to the established standards of the Society's free communications for research.

The Education and Training Committee welcome comments on the report.

Lisa Bartram
Peter Crome