Grow your skills related to age-friendly, patient-centered, team-based healthcare of older adults.
The Age-Friendly Healthcare: Interprofessional Training Program is offered through the HRSA-funded Project ECHO-Geriatrics, a monthly interprofessional telementoring/consultation program focused on care of older adults in primary care.
The program will be offered to health sciences students across UW campuses between October 2024 and May 2025, and participants will be asked to participate in a minimum of three interprofessional telehealth case discussions. Each one-hour session consists of a mini-didactic focused on primary care of older adults followed by a case discussion of 1-2 patients presented by a regional clinician and insights shared by an interprofessional healthcare panel (geriatric medicine, social work, nursing, geriatric psychiatry, pharmacy, and Area Agency on Aging staff) and participants. Discussions focus on high quality interprofessional care of older adults largely based on the four Ms of age-friendly care (what matters, mobility, mentation, and medications). Patient case discussions are de-identified to protect patient confidentiality.
Project ECHO-Geriatrics, an educational activity of the Northwest Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Center is based on the well-established ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) model. Since 2016, over 1000 regionally based clinicians and trainees have received training using this approach. Project ECHO-Geriatrics is now expanding to provide health professions students an opportunity to observe, learn from, and contribute to high quality interprofessional care for older adults. This new opportunity is open to students from across the health professions, including medicine, nursing, social work, public health, pharmacy, dentistry, physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant, speech and language pathology, and nutrition/dietetics.
The approximate time commitment is 7 hours between October 2024 and May 2025. Students will register for their choice of three of the eight Project ECHO sessions available (1 hour each on Zoom, offered monthly). Each session will be followed by a 30-minute debrief/discussion specifically for health professions students (also on Zoom). The program will kick off with a brief online orientation/team building session, and all students will be asked to fill out surveys at course completion. Below are dates/times for six available ECHO sessions.
This program is designed for future healthcare professionals who:
- have clinical training experience with direct patient interaction
- have an interest in the principles of high quality, interprofessional primary care for older adults
- want experience discussing and problem solving real-world primary care of older adults
- want to learn more about a team-based approach to care of older adults
Participants are asked to attend three Zoom sessions selected from the following dates, all held on Fridays, 12:30-2:00PM
An orientation session will be held on Oct 15th from 5:00-5:30pm on zoom.
- October 18, 2024
- November 15, 2024
- December 20, 2024
- January 17, 2025
- February 21, 2025
- March 21, 2025
- April 18, 2025
- May 16, 2025
Register for Age-Friendly Healthcare
Registration will remain open until the program is filled. Questions? Contact Kate Bennett at bennett4@uw.edu
Katherine Bennett, MD
Dr. Bennett is committed to a career in academic medicine as a geriatrics clinician educator, promoting Age-Friendly Care for Older adults. She serves as the Program Director for the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship, which trains the next generation of leaders in geriatric medicine. She is a current recipient of the Geriatric Academic Career Award (GACA) through the Health Services and Research Administration (HRSA). Her project focuses on Age-Friendly Interprofessional Education via Telehealth. She has extensive experience and training in medical education and has developed geriatrics curricula and evaluation tools for health professions students, residents, and fellows.
She is the Assistant Director for Education of the Northwest Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Center (nwgwec.org) funded by HRSA and serves as the founding medical director (est. 2016) of UW’s Project ECHO-Geriatrics (an interprofessional case consultation and education program delivered via telehealth). She worked with two Area Agencies on Aging to create and implement a practicum that teaches family medicine residents, geriatric medicine fellows, and nurse practitioner students about community resources that can optimize the health and well-being of their patients.
She is an advocate for support of geriatrics education. She is on the Board of the National Association for Geriatrics Education (NAGE), and was elected President of NAGE (President Elect 2018-19, President 2019-20). She testified at a U.S. Senate Health Labor and Education (HELP) Committee Hearing in February 2019 to promote expansion of and funding for Project ECHO and the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program.
She practices at Harborview Medical Center in the Senior Care Clinic, on the inpatient geriatrics and general medicine services, and has practiced in the post- acute care setting.