Quality Improvement Projects as Training Tools for Family Medicine Residents and Faculty.

Quality improvement (QI) is part of the future of medicine. However, QI concepts are often poorly understood by physicians. Although teaching QI is required in resident training, an effective QI curriculum is difficult to design due to competing demands from clinic schedules and required rotations.

Greater number of narcotic analgesic prescriptions for osteoarthritis is associated with falls and fractures in elderly adults.

Objectives: To evaluate the changes in types of medications prescribed for pain before and after withdrawal of certain selective cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) inhibitors in 2004 and to determine whether there was an association with fall events in elderly adults with a diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA).

Design: A nested case-control design using electronic medical records compiled between 2001 and 2009.

Setting: Electronic medical records for care provided in an integrated health system in rural Pennsylvania over a 9-year period (2001-09), the midpoint of which rofecoxib and valdecoxib were pulled from the market.

A novel longitudinal geriatric medical student experience: using teaching objective structured clinical examinations.

It has previously been shown that medical students perform poorly when assessing older adults with recurrent falls. To address this and teach students about other geriatric syndromes, a standardized patient, played by one of nine actresses, aging during the course of an afternoon, was developed. The patient is first aged 75 with falls, then 80 with memory problems, then 82 with an acute confusional state.

Homocysteine and mobility in older adults.

Objectives: To determine the influence of homocysteine on mobility decline in older adults.

Design: Prospective cohort.

Setting: Einstein Aging Study, community-based aging study.

Evaluation of an elderly faller by medical students and rehabilitation residents.

As part of the development of a curriculum for medical students and rehabilitation residents at New York University School of Medicine, an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) station was developed for formative evaluation. The goal was to determine the existing knowledge and competence of medical students and rehabilitation residents in the analysis and treatment of a geriatric patient with a history of falls. This OSCE station was designed to focus on three specific clinical skills needed in assessing the elderly faller.

Over-the-counter medication use in older adults.

Use of over-the-counter (OTC) medications is becoming more of a problem in the older adult population as the push to deregulate prescription medications grows. This article summarizes the side effects, adverse reactions, and medication interactions older adults face when using some common OTC medications.