April 2009

·         Announcements

·         Site Update

·         Product Spotlight

·         Call for a Featured Geriatric Site

·         Collaborations

·         New Products

·         Events to Watch for

Announcements:

Share your wisdom!   Comment on the products you view and use.  Use the POGOe 'amazon.com' evaluation system (stars and comments) to help others more easily identify the best usage, strengths and weaknesses of POGOe products.  All comments are anonymous and reviewed before posted.   

Some recent examples:   

-- Human Aging #20016: “Well-prepared resource. Much appreciated reference material.”

 -- Health Care Decision Making WebCT Module for Medical Students #18483: “A thorough and specific discussion about HCP, advance directives, etc. More an independent learning module, it would be a great resource to back up learning in other environments. New Mexico specific; instructors would have to review in advance to determine how their state laws differ. Nice active learning by having students do their own advance directives (but would need to be debriefed in a respectful manner).”

Submit New Products!: Submit your products today, and don’t forget about our secure materials section that is available for all assessment materials.  Any materials posted on POGOe can be cited on your CV.  For more information, contact editor@pogoe.org.  

Attention all Junior Faculty!  JAGS is publishing reviews of POGOe products in their Educational Resources Review section. We are looking for faculty to write reviews and submit to JAGS (Journal of the American Geriatrics Society). These articles are reviewed following the JAGS format, and will therefore count as a peer-reviewed publication.  For more information, contact Zhenya Hurd at zhenya.hurd@mssm.edu.

Site Update:

Coming soon to POGOe – “Ask the Informationist: Geriatric Question of the Month” column. Led by Carol Howe, MD, MLS, University of Arizona College of Medicine, the column will address clinical and educational questions posed by POGOe users and provide in-depth responses supported by relevant research.  To produce a synthesized response, Dr. Howe will draw upon a variety of resources such as PubMed, evidence based databases such as Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE), ACP Journal Club, Up to Date, POGOe, and others. If you have a question, relevant to the field of geriatrics, that you would like to pose to the Informationist, please email us at editor@pogoe.org.

Product Spotlight:

 ACOVE: Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders

By David Reuben, M.D.

Starting in 2000, the Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE) project endeavored to develop a comprehensive set of quality-indicators to improve the care of "vulnerable elders", community-living persons 65 years of age and older who are at high risk for death or functional decline.  ACOVE-3, the third phase of this project completed in 2007 includes 392 quality indicators, covering 26 different conditions in all four domains of care: screening and prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up and continuity. Three of these conditions involve the most basic functions of the human body - cognition, ambulation/mobility, and elimination - which are hugely important to consider when assessing the decline of a patient's health due to aging.  Educating the physicians of tomorrow on cognitive impairment, falls and mobility disorders, and urinary incontinence should feature prominently in the education of physicians. 

To help ease this process, Dr. David Reuben, in collaboration with AGS, RAND Health, and Pfizer, have developed ACOVE - an interactive video-lecture CD containing three distinct modules which efficiently and entertainingly delineates the unique challenges presenting to those entrusted with the care of the vulnerable elderly with these conditions.  An interesting and attractively designed program, ACOVE guides the physician through crucial facets of these three conditions, while simultaneously integrating relevant patient interaction. ... 

Click here for full Editors’ Choice product review, to view the product, and to comment and rate this product on POGOe.  Note: This CD's production has already been discontinued; however, ACOVE is readily available for download - right now and for free - only at POGOe.org!

Featured Geriatric Site:

Recommend a site to be highlighted as a Featured Geriatric Site in the POGOe Newsletter!  Do you know a valuable and educational geriatrics-related site that should be featured in the newsletter?  If so, let us know by writing to editor@pogoe.org. We are looking forward to hearing from you!