UM Geriatrics Clinical Decision Making Instrument
University of Michigan Medical School
The University of Michigan Geriatrics Center, with support from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, developed this 24-item multiple choice instrument for assessing knowledge of clinical geriatrics among health professionals. The instrument emphasizes inpatient care and common geriatric syndromes. It was designed primarily for use among house officers (resident and fellows) in surgical specialties and medical subspecialties, but may also be used among residents in primary care disciplines and medical students. The UM Geriatrics Clinical Decision Making Assessment should prove useful to training programs in surgical specialties and medical subspecialties to gather baseline data, implement curricula, and measure the effects of curricular change on the knowledge of trainees in caring for the complex and interacting needs of older adults. The instrument is also available at http://www.med.umich.edu/geriatrics/edu/gme1.htm
This product consists of the following documents:
- UM Geriatrics Clinical Decision-Making Assessment
- Answer Key with Explanations
This instrument was developed to provide program directors a general indicator of geriatrics clinical knowledge among groups of house officers, rather than a comprehensive assessment of individual physicians’ knowledge related to the care of older patients. The instrument was designed to be brief to enhance administration to large groups of house officers with busy schedules.
Specifically, the instrument was designed to include:
- (a) a focus on clinical management rather than nonclinical issues (e.g., social support, long-term care, health systems organization, and finance; to maintain coherence, relevance, and brevity);
- (b) a case-based multiple choice format (to enhance clinical relevance and reliability of scoring); and
- (c) a length of 20 to 25 items (to allow a completion time of 30 minutes or less).
For reliability and validity information, read the article cited below, “Brief Instrument to Assess Geriatrics Knowledge of Surgical and Medical Subspecialty House Officers” (published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine).