Teaching Tools to Teach Geriatric Medicine to Family Medicine Residents

Objective: To determine if pocket-sized, reference guides are helpful tools for teaching geriatric medicine to family medicine residents. Setting: Loma Linda University Healthcare Education Consortium, a family medicine residency in San Bernardino County, California. Participants: Family medicine residents that successfully completed the required geriatrics rotation between July 2019 and June 2020. Results: From the twelve family medicine residents, 100% believed their geriatric medicine rotation helped them to be successful in residency. The preferred study tool was the pocket guides, mainly the “Geriatric Medicine Pocket Guide” and “2019 AGS Beers Criteria”. For a more comprehensive reading, the study tool most used was search engines such as Up-to-date and Dynamed. Geriatrics at Your Fingertips (Reuben et al., 2016) and the “Guiding Principles for the Care of Older Adults with Multimorbidity Pocket Card” were not as helpful due to the perceived increased efforts to rapidly find clinically relevant information. Conclusion: Pocket guides, especially “Geriatric Medicine Pocket Guide” and “2019 AGS Beers Criteria”, are helpful teaching tools that can be used to augment geriatric medicine education in a family medicine residency.