INTERACTIVE ONLINE AND CLASSROOM-BASED EDUCATION FOR HEALTH PROVIDERS: THE CATCH-ON MODEL

摘要

The healthcare workforce is vastly underprepared to meet the needs of the growing older adult population. In efforts to educate both professional healthcare providers and older adults and families, we have developed free, interactive online educational modules about normal aging, managing multiple chronic conditions, dementia, and interprofessional teams. Building on these modules, we developed evolving older adult vignettes with discussion questions and learning activities for classroom or professional groups, and faculty development seminars to integrate into existing courses that may or may not focus on geriatrics. We present data on 622 learners who completed the professional modules and 269 who completed the family version; 117 professionals and students have participated in training using the evolving cases. Follow up surveys indicate that 82.5% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that that they applied the knowledge and/or skills acquired from the modules to their practice. Implications for training settings will be discussed.