When Women Rise, We All Rise: American Geriatrics Society Position Statement on Achieving Gender Equity in Geriatrics.

Supporting gender equity for women working in geriatrics is important to the growth of geriatrics across disciplines and is critical in achieving our vision for a future in which we are all able to contribute to our communities and maintain our health, safety, and independence as we age. Discrimination can have a negative impact on public health, particularly with regard to those who care for the health of older Americans and other vulnerable older people. Women working in the field of geriatrics have experienced implicit and explicit discriminatory practices that mirror available data on the entire workforce.

Implementation of a direct observation and feedback tool using an interprofessional approach: a pilot study.

Primary care trainees must learn how to communicate effectively with patients during brief outpatient encounters, and direct observation and feedback is necessary to improve these skills. At the same time, programs are seeking more interprofessional learning opportunities for skills that transcend professions. We sought to assess the feasibility of implementing a direct observation tool, the Patient Centered Observation Form (PCOF), for communication training across three professions at the graduate level.

Essentials of Ambulatory Care: An Interprofessional Workshop to Promote Core Skills and Values in Team-based Outpatient Care.

Introduction: Team-based, interprofessional approaches to outpatient care are critical to high-quality patient care. However, few specific educational interventions promoting these skills in graduate level health care trainees have been described to date.

Methods: University of Minnesota faculty from the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Nursing created an interprofessional workshop experience exploring core concepts in outpatient care for graduate level trainees in pediatrics, family medicine, medicine-pediatrics, internal medicine, graduate-level nursing, and pharmacy.

Seven Years of Teaching Communication With the Patient-Centered Observation Form.

Background And Objectives: For years, family medicine has taught patient-centered communication through observations and observation checklists. We explored the utility of one checklist, the Patient-Centered Observation Form (PCOF), to teach and evaluate patient-centered communication in our family medicine residencies.

Methods: We conducted a mixed-method study of five University of Minnesota Family Medicine Residencies' seven years of experience teaching and evaluating residents' patient-centered communication skills.

Development and Implementation of a Capstone Objective Structured Clinical Examination in Nurse Practitioner and Nurse-Midwifery Programs.

Determining when advanced practice registered nurse students are safe and competent for beginning-level practice is challenging. This article describes the development and testing of a capstone objective structured clinical examination designed to evaluate the practice readiness of students enrolled in the family, adult-gerontology, women's health nurse practitioner, and nurse-midwifery tracks. Lessons learned from this process and how they were used to enhance the curricula are discussed.

Essentials of Ambulatory Care a postgraduate-level, interdisciplinary, interprofessional curriculum at the University of Minnesota.

Team-based care is a cornerstone of primary care. However, in medical school and residency, trainees get little formal education on this as a concept and how it works in an outpatient setting. Faculty members from the University of Minnesota created a one-day workshop, "Essentials of Ambulatory Care," to help residents in primary care specialties as well as pharmacy and nursing students pursuing advanced degrees better understand the roles and responsibilities of members of the primary care team.

Automation of a high risk medication regime algorithm in a home health care population.

Objective: Create an automated algorithm for predicting elderly patients' medication-related risks for readmission and validate it by comparing results with a manual analysis of the same patient population.

Materials And Methods: Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) and medication data were reused from a previous, manual study of 911 patients from 15 Medicare-certified home health care agencies. The medication data was converted into standardized drug codes using APIs managed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and then integrated in an automated algorithm that calculates patients' high risk medication regime scores (HRMRs).

Medication regimens in older home care patients.

Medication regimens in older patients have been strongly associated with adverse events leading to hospitalization in ambulatory care settings. Despite a 29% hospitalization rate, to date, no research regarding medication regimens and readmission to the hospital has been completed in the home care setting. As part of a larger study evaluating predictors of readmission to the hospital from home care, descriptive analyses, chi-square tests, and t tests for independent samples were used in this secondary analysis to evaluate the Outcome and Assessment Information Set and medication records from 911 older patients admitted from the hospital to 15 home care agencies.

Botulinum toxin type A for the treatment of urinary tract dysfunction in neurological disorders.

Botulinum toxin type A injections represent an important therapeutic option for patients with neurogenic urinary dysfunction in whom conservative treatment has not been effective. The nurse's role in ensuring that these patients receive appropriate assessment and treatment is discussed.

Defining medication complexity and its effect on outcomes in community dwelling elders receiving home care.

Complexity of medication regimens in community dwelling elders is examined in relationship to emergent care use, hospitalization and self management of medications in this secondary data analysis of OASIS data and medication data from all 2004 open admissions to 15 home health care agencies. Preliminary findings and the use of innovative techniques are discussed highlighting the predictive potential for medication complexity in other settings, risk stratification, and design implications for both clinical tools and databases.

Adventures in health care: designing a wellness center for low-income elders.

This community-based program delivers health promotion and disease prevention services to low-income, ethnically and racially diverse elders to assist residents to age safely in place and to reduce unnecessary and costly use of health care services.