Geriatrics?

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jmattwilson

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Does anyone know much about geriatric fellowships? I have seen some programs based off FM on frieda. Are there seprate ones for IM's, or can an IM apply to one of those programs? What is the outlook for Geriatrics? I assume it is good considering all those Baby Boomer's getting into there senior years.

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Oh yeah, does anyone know of any programs in the southeast and how long they are?
 
Geriatrics I think is 1-2 years in duration. Its a fellowship in IM. I also think its realtively easy to get-you don't see too many people gunning to go into geriatrics.
 
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Thanks for the response. Anyone else got any advice?
 
Yes, the demand for geriatricians is supposed to be increase over the upcoming years as people get older and older and have more complicated medical conditions. However, I personally think that eventually, with the aging population, the avg internists will have so many geriatrics in his/her pt population though that he/she will have to learn how to take care of geriatric pt's by him or herself from a social and medical standpoint because a. there aren't enough geriatricians to go around b. it's part of their internal medicine training. Many geriatricians practice in academic medical centers as no formal geriatric training is required to focus your practice on the geriatric population out in the public, any joe schmoe internist can see only geriatric pt's. And the fact that the pay isn't any more, and sometimes less (secondary to low medicare reimbursements) to general internists, it's not a path that many internists choose to go through (given the extra year or two of fellowship training that one must go through). If a geriatrician were to post on this website though, I'm certain that he or she would say how the fellowship training in geriatrics is essential for being a geriatrician as the elderly are a different breed, but I've always seen geriatricians more as social specialists (eg nursing home/day care placement) rather then medical specialists. Don't mean to offend anybody with that statement though, I'm sure that I'm ignorant on the matter.
 
here at upstate medical university (syracuse NY) binghamton clinical campus we have a mandatory geriatrics clerkship - just started it monday. you may want to do an elective down here as i hear that a geriatrics clerkship is pretty rare :)
 
Overall, many if not most internal medicine residencies provide good geriatric medicine training, especially since a large proportion of the patients we treat are elderly. You can also tailor your residency to provide more focus in geriatrics, such as doing your continuity clinic at a site with a larger geriatric population (like the VA), and by choosing your electives based on your desired specialty. Many internists do geriatrics with no further specialized training. But there are increasing numbers of IM geriatrics fellowships available for those who wish to do so. There are several advantages to doing a geriatrics fellowship -- in particular, geriatrics fellows get much more training in palliative, end-of-life, and hospice care than we typically get during residency, which are aspects of care particularly important to this population.

In general, I think the field of geriatrics is growing and becoming more popular. At this point, it is pretty easy to obtain a geriatrics fellowship, although not all institutions will have fellowships available. It is certainly not one of the more lucrative specialties in terms of pay, but I've found that the physicians who do these fellowships care very much about the field, and are definitely not doing it for the money.
 
Actually I have never met a geriatrician, just read something about the field in a hospital publication. It doesnt really seem that interesting to me just a third year's curiosity. Great discussion guys, thanks a lot.
 
ps
the clerkship is for medical school
 
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