Increasing Geriatrics Expertise for Surgical and Related Medical Specialties - Phase IV

Grant Summary

With Foundation support, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) will use mutually reinforcing efforts to support the efforts of surgical specialties and related fields of medicine to transform themselves through geriatric education, research and leadership development. This will be accomplished through the cofunding of the AGS council of specialty societies, small grants focusing on geriatric needs of each society, updates to the recently published research agenda, a national competition to enhance residency training for 16 programs and the Jahnigen career development awards. In addition, the grant provides modest funds to augment those from the Atlantic Philanthropies to explore geriatrics training for some 207,000 practicing physicians in these disciplines.For over 10 years, the Foundation has supported a major initiative to ensure that physicians who care for older patients preparing for, receiving and recovering from surgical treatments are geriatrically prepared. Targeting 10 disciplines (emergency medicine, anesthesiology, general surgery, ophthalmology, urology, gynecology, orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, thoracic surgery and rehabilitation medicine) known collectively as the surgical and medical specialties, the project has worked with relevant professional societies, specialty residency programs and outstanding individual faculty members to change the disciplines from within.