Resident Initiative

Geriatrics Gems and Palliative Pearls

Interactive Spaced Education  This TEXAS initiative focuses on residents from Internal Medicine, Family and Community Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Neurology, Orthopedics, General Surgery and Urology.  TEXAS will use AAMC and ACGME competencies to develop emails on geriatric and palliative topics that are brief, repetitious and have an element of entertainment.  Residents from two medical specialty areas will receive sound byte emails each week for one month; at the end of the month, the residents will complete a case study using information learned from the sound bytes and related references. 

This process is repeated for six months at which time a case competition will take place among the residents.  Prizes will be awarded to the winners.  Thereafter, the residents will receive one sound byte each month for the remainder of their training.   By the end of the grant period, the Geriatric Gems and Palliative Pearl Sound bytes will reach every resident in all medical specialties within the school.

Case Competition

A case competition among residents based on Geriatric Gems and Palliative Pearls is held periodically.  Faculty volunteers organize and create the content for this event.  The competition utilizes a game show theme, and contains pertinent questions relating back to the previous six months of sound bytes and the case study. The format for the competition may change from year to year, but the content will always focus on the residents’ acquisition of knowledge about geriatrics and palliative medicine.  Monetary prizes are awarded the winning team. 

Assessment

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the TEXAS program, a variety of evaluation approaches are incorporated. The major foci of the TEXAS program are the AAMC and ACGME competencies. The AAMC focus on content obtained while in medical school, where as the ACGME competencies are oriented to the resident level and beyond. The evaluation plan is designed to incorporate ongoing evaluation on multiple levels, addressing both program and learner objectives.