August 2009

  Announcements

  Site Update

  Product Spotlight

  Ask the Informationist

  Featured Geriatric Site

  Collaborations

  New Products

  Annual Meetings

  Funding Opportunities

Announcements:

Would you like your product to be reviewed by your peers?  As announced in a previous newsletter, JAGS is publishing reviews of POGOe products in their Educational Resources Review section. Volunteer reviewers have asked for product recommendations. If you would like your product to be chosen for a JAGS review, send an email to Editor@POGOe.org.

Site Update:

How did you like the POGOe product?

You may have received a few emails from POGOe over the past couple of weeks.   Modeled after many different commercial feedback emails, this new system is being tested in order to encourage product ratings. An email will be sent 48 hours after you have spent some time viewing a product with the 5 star rating options provided directly in the message. When you click on a rating, you are sent to the product description page on POGOe where you can easily add a comment if you wish to explain your rating choice. All comments are anonymous and reviewed before posted. Your opinions are valuable to others when they are searching for the best product for their needs.

Some recent comments: "This GeriaSims is one of the best in the series. It definitely teaches what it is designed to teach and does it in a very engaging and interesting way! I really enjoyed learning this topic in this way." (Falls in Older Adults #18566); and "Great material! You combined very useful material in an excellent, interactive way!" (Delirium in Older Patients: An Online Case-Based Curriculum #20482).

This new email system has been implemented with the intention of unobtrusively encouraging your feedback. If you have any suggestions about how it can be improved, please send an email to Editor@POGOe.org. You can always opt out of mass emails such as the feedback system or newsletter by changing your options in My Account.

Product Spotlight:

Geriatric Neurology Web Module for Third-Year Neurology Clerkship

By Drs. Heather Anderson and Mary McDonald

The development of minimum competencies in geriatrics for medical students presents an enormous challenge to medical educators. Today’s clinician-educators are being stretched thin with increasing teaching demands while also facing increasing institutional demands to be more clinically productive. Thus, traditional instructor-centered teaching is yielding to a learner-centered model that puts learners in control of their own education. E-learning is increasingly being used by medical educators today to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of educational interventions in the face of these pedagogical challenges.
 
Drs. Heather Anderson and Mary McDonald from the University of Kansas Medical Center have developed an interactive web module that focuses on easing up an instructor-driven curriculum by shifting to one that is web-based and learner-driven. Faced with only 2 weeks of neurology clerkship, KU employed the use of a web module as a vehicle to deliver geriatric neurology education to their 3rd year medical students. The module covers 10 geriatric neurology topics: Parkinson's disease, stroke, dementia, delirium, peripheral neuropathy, neck/back pain, sleep disorders, temporal arteritis, cranial nerve disorders, and localization of a lesion.

Click here for full Editors' Choice product review, to view the product, and to comment and rate this product on POGOe. 

Ask the Informationist:

Q: Is there a difference between repleting B12 insufficiency with oral as opposed to IM cyanocobalamin? Some of my elderly patients are reluctant to have monthly shots...

A: The following is directly quoted from the "Plain Language Summary" of the Cochrane Review, first published in 2005 and edited and reprinted in The Cochrane Library 2009, Issue 3:

    Vitamin B12 deficiency can cause anaemia and neurological complications. Vitamin B12 is rarely prescribed in the oral form in most countries. Two randomised controlled studies were included in this review. The trials recruited a total of 108 participants and followed up 93 of these from 90 days to four months. The evidence derived from these limited studies suggests that high oral doses of B12 (1000 mcg and 2000 mcg) could be as effective as intramuscular administration in achieving haematological and neurological responses. 1(p.2)

The apex of all the many triangles and pyramids which have been constructed to demonstrate the hierarchy of evidence based medicine is always “systematic reviews and meta analyses,” the gold standard of which is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews… Click here to read more!

Do you have a clinical question? Ask the Informationist for an evidence-based response!

Featured Geriatric Site:

Health and Age.com provides health information for adults age 50+ to educate about a wide variety of medical conditions and assist with communication with health professionals. The information is provided from the perspective that aging is a lifelong process starting at birth, and not something that should be ignored until problems arise. While the site is sponsored by Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, the articles are edited by medical professionals and do not endorse any particular company or product.   Visit them at www.healthandage.com for more information.

Collaborations:

D.W. Reynolds FD~AGE Physician Mini-Fellowships in Geriatrics:
The Mini-Fellowships are 3 - 4 day intensive courses for non-geriatricians seeking training in geriatrics education and curriculum development. They target clinician-educators in internal medicine, family medicine, hospital medicine and other subspecialties. The course is free of charge to participants who are not from Reynolds-sponsored schools. CME credit is awarded.

  UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine: October 14-16, 2009 and February 10-12, 2010
Visit www.geronet.ucla.edu or contact Anne Hu at: AnneHu@mednet.ucla.edu or (310) 312-0531 for more information

  Duke University School of Medicine: September 21-25 (GME) & October 11-15, 2009 (Medical Student Education in Geriatrics)
Visit careinaging.duke.edu or contact Emily Herbert at: emily.herbert@duke.edu or (919) 660-7577 for more information

  Mount Sinai School of Medicine: February 28^th - March 2^nd, 2010
Contact GeriEd.Programs@mssm.edu or contact Faye Francisco at (212) 241-3624

Physician Continuing Medical Education (CME) Courses in Geriatrics:

The growing list of available CME courses is now kept directly on POGOe.  To view the list, click here.

A Sample of the New Products
on POGOe:

Cadaver Treasure Hunt Faculty Guide #20524 by Lynn McNicoll, Aman Nanda  & Richard Besdine

The Patient Encounter: Asking Difficult Questions #20523 by Kristin Hahn-Cover

Transitions in Care Curriculum for Medical Students #20518 by Susan Bray-Hall & Eva Aagaard

Annual Meetings of Geriatric Associations & Societies:

  6th Annual pre-ASA Meeting (OAPRS & SAGA): October 16, 2009; New Orleans, Louisiana

  Annual SAGA meeting at the ASA:   October 18, 2009, 5-8PM; New Orleans, Louisiana

  GSA’s 62nd Annual Scientific Meeting: November 18-22, 2009; Atlanta, Georgia

Funding Opportunities:

ASP Announces Geriatric Project RFA
ASP has issued a request for applications (RFA)   for projects that will improve the quality of care delivered to the aging population.  ASP will fund four $15,000 grants for internal medicine specialty societies to launch relevant projects, giving preference to applications that propose to develop curricula and educational products for fellows incorporating geriatric content.  The deadline for applications is Monday, September 14, 2009; a list of past projects is available online.  For additional information, contact ASP Project Administrator Erika D. Tarver at (202) 861-9351 or etarver@im.org.

For any questions or more information, please contact us at Editor@POGOe.org.

POGOe, the Portal of Geriatrics Online Education, is a major initiative of the ADGAP/Reynolds Geriatrics Education Coordinating Center and is funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

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