Publications by authors named "Kirsten Wilkins"

Purpose Of Review: This paper summarizes the prevalence, impact, and presentation of ageism across multiple mental health care settings including inpatient, outpatient, long-term care, and criminal justice. Strategies for combating ageism are described.

Recent Findings: Ageism is a common form of bias that has deleterious medical and psychosocial consequences for older adults.

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Verbal mistreatment of staff by patients is common in health care settings. Experiencing or witnessing mistreatment can have harmful psychological impacts, affecting well-being and clinical practice. As part of an effort to become an antiracist organization, an academic community mental health center based in Connecticut developed an initiative to address verbal mistreatment.

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Trauma-informed care is a transdisciplinary framework that existed well before 2020, but it is now more imperative to teach it and incorporate it into medical education. This paper describes a novel interprofessional curriculum and its focus on trauma-informed care-notably, including institutional and racial trauma-that was implemented by Yale University for medical, physician associate, and advanced practice registered nursing students.

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The older adult population in the United States is poised to reach 83.7 million by 2050, and up to 20% will suffer from cognitive and mental illnesses. We do not have the workforce available to meet this need; therefore, general psychiatrists will care for many older psychiatric patients.

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Sleep disruption is common in older adults and is associated with many poor health outcomes. It is vital for providers to understand insomnia and other sleep disorders in this population. This article outlines age-related changes in sleep, and medical, psychiatric, environmental, and psychosocial factors that may impact sleep.

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Objective: Mistreatment of health care providers (HCPs) is associated with burnout and lower-quality patient care, but mistreatment by patients and family members is underreported. We hypothesized that an organizational strategy that includes training, safety incident reporting, and a response protocol would increase HCP knowledge, self-efficacy, and reporting of mistreatment.

Methods: In this single-center, serial, cross-sectional study, we sent an anonymous survey to HCPs before and after the intervention at a 213-bed tertiary care university children's hospital between 2018 and 2019.

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Purpose Of Review: The prevalence of alcohol use disorder (AUD) among older adults in the United States is rising, but remains underdiagnosed, underreported, and inadequately managed. This review highlights the medical, social, and cultural factors of AUD in older adults and provides guidelines for its screening, evaluation, and management.

Recent Findings: The COVID-19 pandemic has created additional challenges and barriers to care, as older adults may have disproportionate worsening of anxiety, depression, and substance use resulting from increased isolation related to physical distancing and shelter-in-place guidelines.

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Mistreatment by patients is unfortunately common in clinical medicine, including geriatric subspecialties. Despite the prevalence of this problem, there are few standardized approaches for addressing it at both interpersonal and institutional levels. The "ERASE" framework is a novel, practical approach for addressing mistreatment by patients.

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Objective: With the number of geriatric psychiatry fellows declining from a peak of 106 during 2002-2003 to 48 during 2020-2021, this study aims to investigate characteristics of the geriatric psychiatry training requirement across U.S. psychiatry residency programs and to identify specific factors which may influence residents to pursue geriatric psychiatry subspecialty training.

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Strong and effective clinical teamwork has been shown to improve medical outcomes and reduce medical errors. Incorporating didactic and clinical activities into undergraduate medical education in which students work in teams will develop skills to prepare them to work in clinical teams as they advance through their education and careers. At the Yale School of Medicine, we foster the development of team skills in the classroom through team-based learning (TBL) and in clinical settings with the Interprofessional Longitudinal Clinical Experience (ILCE).

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Medical schools around the world have been grappling with how to adapt undergraduate medical curricula in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our institution made the decision to suspend all clinical clerkships the day before the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recommended to US medical schools a similar suspension of "medical student participation in any activities that involved patient contact." This manuscript describes the rapid evolution in our decision-making as we weighed various information, values, and priorities in the face of the emerging public health crisis.

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Objective: The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) Scholars Program was developed to recruit trainees into geriatric psychiatry fellowships and is considered a pipeline for fellowship recruitment. Nonetheless, the number of trainees entering geriatric psychiatry fellowship is declining, making it important to identify modifiable factors that may influence trainees' decisions to pursue fellowship. We analyzed survey data from Scholars Program participants to identify demographic characteristics, attitudes toward program components, and behaviors after the program that were independently associated with the decision to pursue fellowship.

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Objective: Social isolation and loneliness-common concerns in older adults-are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. To address social isolation in nursing home residents, the Yale School of Medicine Geriatrics Student Interest Group initiated a Telephone Outreach in the COVID-19 Outbreak (TOCO) Program that implements weekly phone calls with student volunteers.

Methods: Local nursing homes were contacted; recreation directors identified appropriate and interested elderly residents.

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Objective: The number of physicians trained in geriatric psychiatry is dwindling. The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) developed novel educational programs designed to foster interest in the field. The objective of this study was to compare participant characteristics and perceived benefits of two AAGP educational programs for trainees: Stepping Stones (1997-2007) and the Scholars Program (2010-2016).

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Introduction: Mistreatment of physicians by patients is a long-standing phenomenon that has garnered increased attention recently. Medical students and residents also experience mistreatment, and many supervising physicians do not know how to recognize it or respond appropriately. Little guidance exists as to how faculty should best address these situations.

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Background: Medical students have high rates of depression, anxiety, and burnout that have been found to affect their empathy, professional behaviors, and performance as a physician. While studies have examined predictors for burnout and depression in the United States (US), no study, to our knowledge, has compared depression in medical students cross-culturally, or has attempted to examine the effect of factors influencing rates including burnout, exercise, stress, unmet mental health needs, and region.

Aim: To examine rates of depression in three international cohorts of medical students, and determine variables that may explain these differences.

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