Aiming to improve care of older adults: an innovative faculty development workshop.

<bold>Introduction/aims: </bold>Internists care for older adults and teach geriatrics to trainees, but they often feel ill-prepared for these tasks. The aims of our 1-day Continuing Medical Education workshop were to improve the knowledge and self-perceived competence of general internists in their care of older adults and to increase their geriatrics teaching for learners.<bold>Setting: </bold>Two internal medicine training programs encompassing University, Veterans Affairs, and a community-based hospital in Portland, OR, USA.<bold>Program Description: </bold>Course faculty identified gaps in assessment of cognition, function, and decisional capacity; managing care transitions; and treatment of behavioral symptoms. To address these gaps, our workshop provided geriatric content discussions followed by small group role plays to apply newly learned content. Forty teaching faculty participated.<bold>Program Evaluation: </bold>Participants completed 13-item multiple-choice pre- and post-workshop geriatric knowledge tests, pre- and post-workshop surveys of self-perceived competence to care for older adults, and completed an open-ended 'commitment to change' prompt after the intervention. Knowledge scores improved following the intervention (61% to 72%, p < .0001), as did self-perceived competence (11 of 14 items significant). Seventy-one percent of participants reported success in meeting their commitment to change goals.<bold>Discussion: </bold>A 1-day intervention improved teaching faculty knowledge and self-perceived competence to care for older patients and led to self-perceived changes in teaching behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]