Geriatric Skills Assessment Tool (GSAT)
Georgetown University School of Medicine
The growing demographics of the older population demands that all physicians be trained in the care of the elderly. However, not all training programs have dedicated teaching time for geriatrics. In addition many current faculty have had little training in taking care of the older adults. In fact, many have had little training in teaching these geriatric skills. We designed this tool keeping in mind a learner-centered approach to curriculum development.
This tool can be used both for the teacher or the learner. The tool focuses on identifying the following for the:
- Confidence in performing a geriatric skill
- Confidence in teaching a geriatric skill
- Further interest in training in a geriatric skill
The goal is to identify the following:
- Skills that the learners have low confidence in performing
- Skills that teachers have low confidence in teaching
- Skills that both learners and teachers have further interest in training.
Ideally the skill that has the highest number of participants with low confidence in either performing or teaching AND high interest in further training should be the focus of the curriculum.
The tool was developed after much work as a result of the curriculum development program at Johns Hopkins University. The scales were chosen after much thought. There is no scoring system and the tool can be used simply to rank skills or to identify skills which have low confidence AND high ineterest in further training.
This product was reviewed by the Curriculum Development Program at JHU.