OVAR GEC Interprofessional Healthcare Workforce Training Year 5

Project Description: The proposed project is based on national and regional data and trends, and on documented workforce training needs of the OVAR/GEC region. The project objectives are to create a data base and distance learning module on falls and injury prevention; to conduct and evaluate an evidence-based falls and injury prevention clinical initiative at a nursing home which will document primary, secondary and tertiary patient data; to provide clinical training for students/residents through use of hospital-based standardized patients and clinical rotations in a geriatrics clinic and nursing home; to provide faculty/students/residents with basic geriatrics training through infusion of content into inter-professional grand rounds and courses; to conduct 25 regional CE/CME geriatrics workshops; to conduct five Train the Trainer workshops on “Teaching Certified Nursing Assistants to Care for Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease” that will enable professionals to teach nurse aides to provide better care; to conduct five webinars with accompanying podcasts for agricultural health care workers who serve older farmers; and to collaborate with inter-professional GEC colleagues from CA, MO, NY, TX, and IL to provide ten workshops and five webinars on emergency preparedness and response for a national audience. In addition, a special 160-hour faculty development initiative is proposed to train and retrain faculty in Developing Clinical Competency in Dementia Management. This project proposes to provide a total of 8,436 inter-professional trainees with 50,767 CE/CME in order to improve the care of older persons with Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and other chronic conditions, decrease the number of falls and injuries in nursing homes, disseminate research findings to agricultural health workers who serve older farmers, increase geriatrics skills and competencies of health care faculty, students and professionals, and enhance the recruitment and retention of rural health providers.