Learning to care for older patients: hospitals and nursing homes as learning environments.

Context: A significant challenge facing health care is the ageing of the population, which calls for a major response in medical education. Most clinical learning takes place within hospitals, but nursing homes may also represent suitable learning environments in which students can gain competencies in geriatric medicine.

Objectives: This study explores what students perceive as the main learning outcomes of a geriatric medicine clerkship in a hospital or a nursing home, and explicitly addresses factors that may stimulate or hamper the learning process.