Course for post-acute care physicians offers educational starting point, study finds 

A new curriculum designed to help clinicians care for post-acute and long-term care (PALTC) residents is feasible to enhance education for professionals that care for older adults in those settings, according to a report published on Jan. 13 in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The project explored the feasibility of creating and launching an educational program to assist clinicians in acute care settings expand their practice to care for older adults in long-term care settings.

“This course may serve as a starting point for educating clinicians without training in geriatrics who are called upon to practice in PALTC settings,” the authors said.

The need for the course arose in 2021, after organizational changes in the Veterans Affairs (VA) system involved a team taking over care for residents of a 110-bed VA Community Living Center (CLC). The facility is a PALTC setting within the VA healthcare system. 

In November of that year, the team asked clinicians there to take part in a needs assessment to see topics would be most helpful when training others to respond to the needs of PALTC residents.

According to the results of the needs assessment, 94% of hospitalists and 50% of advanced practice providers participated in the needs assessment. Mostly, they wanted to know about medication management, pain management and how to distinguish urinary tract infections from asymptomatic bacteriuria. According to surveys, topics that need more coverage included pressure ulcers, skin and soft tissue infections, pain management and falls prevention.

The course was available from March 10 until June 25, 2022. The sessions were recorded, and attendees received continuing medical education (CME) credits for taking the course.

The 12-session course showed that enacting the curriculum could help hospitalists enhance their education as they expanded their practice to care for residents receiving PALTC services at a VA CLC, the authors said. 

“Our project demonstrated the feasibility of developing and implementing educational content to help clinicians experienced in acute care settings expand their practice to care for institutionalized older adults,” the authors said. “This course may serve as a starting point for educating clinicians without training in geriatrics who are called upon to practice in PALTC settings.”