Effects of geriatric clinical skills training on the attitudes of medical students

BACKGROUND: Physicians’ attitudes, knowledge and skills are powerful determinants of quality of care for older patients. Previous studies found that using educational interventions to improve attitude is a difficult task. No previous study sought to determine if a skills-oriented educational intervention improved student attitudes towards elderly patients. METHODS: This study evaluated the effect of a geriatric clinical skills training (CST) on attitudes of University of Bern medical students in their first year of clinical training. The geriatric CST consisted of four 2.5-hour teaching sessions that covered central domains of geriatric assessment (e.g., cognition, mobility), and a textbook used by students to self-prepare. Students’ attitudes were the primary outcome, and were assessed with the 14-item University of California at Los Angeles Geriatrics Attitudes Scale (UCLA-GAS) in a quasi-randomized fashion, either before or after geriatric CST. RESULTS: A total of 154 medical students participated. Students evaluated before the CST had a median UCLA-GAS overall scale of 49 (interquartile range 44–53). After the CST, the scores increased slightly, to 51 (interquartile range 47–54; median difference 2, 95% confidence interval 0–4, P = 0.062). Of the four validated UCLA-GAS subscales, only the resource distribution subscale was significantly higher in students evaluated after the geriatric CST (median difference 1, 95% confidence interval 0–2, P = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Teaching that targets specific skills may improve the attitudes of medical students towards elderly patients, though the improvement was slight. The addition of attitude-building elements may improve the effectiveness of future skills-oriented educational interventions.