Training and Assessing Interprofessional Virtual Teams Using a Web-Based Case System.

Purpose: Today, clinical care is often provided by interprofessional virtual teams-groups of practitioners who work asynchronously and use technology to communicate. Members of such teams must be competent in interprofessional practice and the use of information technology, two targets for health professions education reform. The authors created a Web-based case system to teach and assess these competencies in health professions students.

Improving outcomes and lowering costs by applying advanced models of in-home care.

With advances in monitoring and telemedicine, the complexity of care administered in the home to properly selected patients can approach that delivered in the hospital. The challenges include making sure that qualified personnel regularly visit the patient at home, both individually and in teams; information is accurately communicated among the caregiver teams across venues and over time; and patients understand the information communicated to them by providers. Despite these challenges, the benefits of treating chronically or terminally ill patients at home are significant.

Social learning: medical student perceptions of geriatric house calls.

Bandura's social learning theory provides a useful conceptual framework to understand medical students' perceptions of a house calls experience at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Social learning and role modeling reflect Liaison Committee on Medical Education guidelines for "Medical schools (to) ensure that the learning environment for medical students promotes the development of explicit and appropriate professional attributes (attitudes, behaviors, and identity) in their medical students." This qualitative study reports findings from open-ended survey questions from 123 medical students who observed a preceptor during house calls to elderly homebound patients.

The importance of "high valence" events in a successful program for teaching geriatrics to medical students.

Virginia Commonwealth University developed an enhanced medical student geriatric curriculum that includes required home visits and nursing home visits for second year students (180 per year), an annual Forum on Aging for all first and second year students, and small group exercises. We added 30 hours of basic science material to pre-clinical courses and increased clinical exposure to geriatricians in third and fourth years. Student satisfaction with individual experiences was high.