Stimulating Interest in a Career in Geriatrics - The Scholarship Award Summit

Photo by: DGies / Flickr

When the clock strikes midnight on January 1st, the very oldest of the baby boomers will turn 65 years of age. Every hour thereafter another the equivalent of a Boeing 747 airplane full of baby boomers will be turning 65. By 2030, the US will have effectively doubled the population who are older than 65 to an estimated 71 million individuals.

It is imperative that we think about novel approaches to increase the numbers of practicing geriatricians given this dramatic change in our population demographics. The John A. Hartford Foundation has led the way in promoting models to increase recruitment in advanced fellowships by targeting a wide range of learners. Among these models include those focused on residents, such as the Geriatrics Is Your Future Program at Baylor College of Medicine, and the Annual Resident Award Summit at the Southeast Center of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine.

Building upon these programs, the UCSF Division of Geriatrics just announced the first annual Geriatrics Scholarship Award Summit open to ACGME interns and residents in Internal Medicine or Family Medicine from across the US. The goal of the Award is to stimulate interest in a career in academic geriatrics by recognizing residents’ scholarly or research achievements in aging or geriatrics. Each award carries with it a cash prize of $500 plus a stipend to cover travel and lodging in San Francisco to present their work at a special award summit.

More information about the Geriatrics Scholarship Award Summit can be found at UCSF’s Division of Geriatrics Website. This is an exceptional oppurtunity for interns and residents, so please forward this on!

by: Eric Widera

Comments

Carol said…

What about nurses (RNs and advance practice nurses)? Hmmm...

December 15, 2010 at 6:03 PM

The Dangers of Fleet Enemas

The dangers of oral sodium phosphate preparations are fairly well known in the medical community. In 2006 the FDA issued it’s first warning that patients taking oral sodium phosphate preparations are at risk for potential for acute kidney injury. Two years later, over-the-counter preparations of these drugs were voluntarily withdrawn by the manufacturers. Those agents still available by prescription were given black box warnings mainly due to acute phosphate nephropathy that can result in renal failure, especially in older adults. Despite all this talk of oral preparations, little was mentioned about a sodium phosphate preparation that is still available over-the-counter – the Fleet enema.

Why Oral Sodium Phosphate Preparations Are Dangerous

Before we go into the risks of Fleet enemas, lets spend just a couple sentences on why oral sodium phosphate preparations carry significant risks. First, oral sodium phosphate preparations can cause significant fluid shifts within the colon …

Dying without Dialysis

There is a terrific article in this weeks Journal of Pain and Symptom Management by Fliss Murtagh of King's College in London about the epidemiology of symptoms for patients with advanced renal failure who die without dialysis. This study is important because while we know that patients with advanced renal failure have a limited life expectancy and the average age of initiation of hemodialysis is increasing, we know little about the alternatives to hemodialysis. Specifically, we know nothing about symptoms affecting quality of life among patients who elect not to start dialysis (so called "conservative management" - is this the best label?). This article provides a terrific counterpoint to the article in last years NEJM showing that nursing home residents who initiated hemodialysis tended to die and decline in function (see GeriPal write up here).

The study authors followed patients with the most advanced form of chronic kidney disease (the new name for renal failu…

Survival from severe sepsis: The infection is cured but all is not well

Severe sepsis is a syndrome marked by a severe infection that results in the failure of at least one major organ system: For example, pneumonia complicated by kidney failure. It is the most common non-cardiac cause of critical illness and is associated with a high mortality rate.

But what happens to those who survive their hospitalization for severe sepsis? An important study published in JAMA from Iwashyna and colleagues provides answers and tells us all is not well. When the patient leaves the hospital, the infection may be cured, but the patient and family will need to contend with a host of major new functional and cognitive deficits.

Iwashyna examined disability and cognitive outcomes among 516 survivors of severe sepsis. These subjects were Medicare enrollees who were participants in the Health and Retirement Study. The average age of patients was 77 years.

When interviewed after discharge, most survivors were left with major new deficits in their ability to live independently. …

GeriPal

Search This Blog